The name, logo and two prototypes of the first Polish electric car brand were unveiled in an online presentation on Tuesday, with the state-sponsored project’s first vehicles set to roll off the production lines in 2023.
The brand is to be called Izera, inspired by the Izera Mountains on Poland’s border with the Czech Republic. The company’s slogan, “a million reasons to drive on”, refers to an earlier statement by Poland’s prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki expressing initial hopes to have a million electric cars on Poland’s roads by 2025, reports Dziennik.pl.
“The gentle elevations and wide-open spaces [of the mountains] make them ideal for family outings and give them a distinct character, like our car,” explained Paweł Tomaszek of ElectroMobility Poland, a company launched in 2016 and controlled by four state-owned energy companies.
“The name is friendly and easy to pronounce and remember for people outside of Poland. Izera also has European ambitions and will be available outside of Poland,” he added, quoted by motoring website Moto.pl.
The logo of the new make was also revealed, modelled on a hexagon or honeycomb containing a diamond, with its interior resembling a compass rose, according to RMF.
Prototypes of a white SUV and red hatchback were presented at the launch, which will operate on the same platform, although it is not yet known which one, as talks are ongoing with two suppliers.
The cars will be capable of accelerating from 0 to 100 km/h in 8 seconds, available with a choice of two capacities, and have a range of up to 400 km, reports Moto.pl.
The prototypes were created by a team of Polish engineers and stylists working with designers from Italian firm Torino Design. Polish designer Tadeusz Jelec is a consultant on the project. “I was fascinated by cars that give the impression of a cocoon, a tulip in which both passengers and the driver fit,” Jelec told RMF, stressing that the cars are to be built to cater for families.
ElectroMobility Poland plans to open a factory and production line in mid-2021 in Silesia in southern Poland, with the first cars on the roads two years later. It expects to create an initial 3,500 jobs and a further 3,000 at a later stage, reports RMF.
“Our ambition from the outset was for the car to be accessible, for electrics to be affordable within three to four years,” says company CEO Piotr Zaremba. “An electric car has the advantage of having lower running costs. Unfortunately, it is still more expensive,” he added, promising that favourable monthly instalment plans would be available.
Some experts were disappointed by the lack of detail provided at the long-awaited launch, according to Wirtualne Media. “The future of motoring is electric without any doubt, so the question is ‘how?’. Unfortunately, the press conference…added further questions to this fundamental question,” says Maciej Pertyński, a World Car of the Year juror.
The most important issue according to Pertyński concerns the platform the cars will run on, which remains unresolved, while the parameters and performance announced do not set it apart from the competition.
Motoring journalist Marek Wieruszewski noted that Izera would be a Polish electric car brand rather than a Polish electric car as such, stressing that in the globalised age a car’s nationality is often unclear, reports Wirtualne Media.
ElectroMobility Poland, founded in 2016, is controlled by four state-owned energy giants: Tauron, PGE, Enea and Energa. To date, the company has received 70 million zloty of funds, and had spent 30.7 million zloty up till the end of 2019, according to Business Insider.
The original release date for the car was advertised as 2018, with “a short production series” in 2019, but was subsequently pushed back several times.
Poland’s government has been championing electric transport in recent years, with the aim of making the country an e-mobility powerhouse. In 2017, the government’s Electromobility Development Plan assumed that by 2025 there would be a million electric cars in Poland, although this was later revised to a new goal of 600,000 electric and hybrid vehicles by 2030.
Main image credit: Izera.com press materials
Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
