THE FIRST THREE BULGARIAN ELECTRIC CARS

 WE PRESENT TO YOU THE FIRST THREE BULGARIAN ELECTRIC CARS MANUFACTURED in 1966, 1967 and 1970.

The courage of Bulgarian engineers is built on the rapidly growing domestic production of electric cars, which began as early as 1952, when we produced the first Bulgarian electric car. (40 years later, in 1992, we reached 1,500,000 produced trucks and exported them all over the world.) Therefore, in the 1960s, Bulgaria had a serious advantage among the world's mobile constructors because of our developed production of electric trucks - for its needs in the BAS a separate Scientific Research and Design Institute for Electric and Forklifts (NIPKIEM) was established. 315-1, (PIONEER-63) Research and Design Institute for Electric and Forklifts (NIPKIEM) creates the first Bulgarian - and in general Eastern European - electric car. Completed in 1966 but not officially presented. The two-seater body, the presence of a cardan with a main drive and a differential (which in both cases is from ZAZ-965. The design and type of the body is exposed and made of sheet metal.
PIONEER-63 (PIONEER-67)
is the second Bulgarian electric car produced in 1967.
It is a "light car for two passengers", as the article in the then magazine "Nauka i Tehnika" tells. The electric motor with a power of 6.3 kilowatts provides a speed of up to 55 km/h, and the total weight of the machine is only 850 kilograms.
It is the first professional experience in creating a modern passenger electric car in Bulgaria. Work on the prototype, designated 315-2, began in September 1966. Its exterior was initially made of life-size Styrofoam and wax, after which molds were removed in which the fiberglass body was cast.
Pioner-63 was exhibited at the Plovdiv Fair in September 1967. Its construction used many off-the-shelf components and parts, such as the front axle and steering gear, which were taken from the Zaporozhets
Designed and constructed by NIPKIEM team.
It uses lead-acid batteries designed for it at the BAS. The credit for the preservation of the only two photos goes to Assoc. 2nd century, Ph.D. Eng. Evgeni Tanchev, responsible designer of the bodywork.
ELMO-70.
It is the third Bulgarian elmobile that uses the Moskvich-426 body, modifying it almost entirely:
The differential has been removed and replaced with an electric motor connected to a planetary gearbox with a gear ratio of 1:4.67. The electric motor has a nominal power of 9 kilowatts, operates at 80 volts and weighs only 65 kg. Its efficiency is 85% - nearly three times that of the conventional internal combustion engine used by Moskvich.
The real novelty in the Elmo 70, however, is the battery created at the Central Laboratory of Electrochemical Power Sources. At the same time, Ford's electric prototypes use lead batteries with a capacity of 5.75 kilowatt hours, in Japan Hitachi is developing nickel-zinc batteries with a capacity of 24.9 kWh, and the Bulgarian one is zinc-air, with a capacity of 40 kWh. On top of that, it is significantly lighter than the Japanese development - 400 kg against 697 for the Hitachi product.
ELMO-70 is not particularly fast - it develops up to 60 km/h. But at the expense of this, its mileage fully corresponds even to today's standards for electric cars - it is 240 kilometers in real conditions, as shown by tests on the capital's ring road ("Science and Technology" describes how during the first tests the driver was stopped by a curious car driver, because the car did not make a sound. It turned out that the examiner had forgotten his documents in the laboratory).