The Worst EV Ever: Russia's Lada Rapan Fiasco in the 1990s

By Gilbert Smith

Watching the US government flip-flop on its support for electric vehicles over the last few years has been dizzying, but not exactly surprising. The history of EVs has always been very stop-and-start. Electric cars date all the way back to the dawn of the motorized vehicle, it's only been a matter of creating an EV that's viable as a mass-produced consumer product.

Over in Russia, they've experienced many of the same boons and setbacks as we have here in the US, ensuring there have been just as many one-offs, oddities, and flops in the land of the Lada as we've seen over here in the realm of Ford and Chevy.

In fact, Russia might have fair claim to having built the worst EV concept in modern history, with possible mainstream production on the cards if it hit it off. The Lada Rapan seemed less like a real electric car than like something Saturday Night Live cooked up to make fun of the EV segment.

The World Almost Went Electric In The Late 1990s

In the past, we've covered the late 1990s as a point in time where the world almost went electric. There's an unusually high concentration of electric cars, prototypes, and limited-run battery-powered fleet vehicles dated to 1997 and 1998. A lot of this had to do with California, which had issued a mandate in 1990 dictating that anyone who wanted to keep doing business on the Golden Coast had better get to work on a zero-emissions vehicle.

This mandate applied not only to American automakers, like General Motors which would go on to produce the EV1, and Chevrolet, producing the electric S-10, but Asian automakers like Toyota and Honda. The electric Toyota Rav4 actually dates all the way back to 1997.

This begs the question, though, of why Russia was getting into the act. Can you remember ever seeing a Lada on an American road? Lada's never had much of a presence in the States.

Ultimately, Lada simply didn't want to be left behind. California's CARB mandate gave the industry a swift kick in the pants to get busy on those EVs, but the industry was already moving in that direction. When President George Bush Sr signed the Clean Air Act Amendment and the Oil Pollution Act into law in 1990, we were becoming more environmentally aware, on a global level. An electric car was one way of making sure your company was prepared for the future.

The Lada Rapan Wasn't Going To Make Any True Believers

One of the biggest challenge EVs faced in the 1990s was proving to the public not only that it could be done, but that it was worth doing in the first place. While the electric Fords and Hondas of the late 90s might have nudged some doubters in a more positive direction, the Lada Rapan likely had the inverse effect, discouraging even the most enthusiastic EV advocates. Just take a look at these specs.

These specs might make for a charming little golf cart, but can you imagine taking this bumper car out on the highway? Russian city speeds were limited to about 37 mph back in the late 1990s, while highway speeds were more like 62 mph, which is pretty close to our own 65-mph limits. The Rapan would have been incapable of even keeping up with traffic, and it took so long to get up to its meager top speed, you could watch the entire car-washing scene from The Transporter before it gets there.

And It Was Ugly As Sin, Too

Add to that, this was one of the ugliest cars ever built. It deserves some credit for predicting the bubbly, colorful look of many 2000s concepts, like the Dodge Zeo and the Ford Airstream, but the Rapan looks less like a serious car design and more like an ugly space helmet for an even uglier space alien with way too many eyeballs.

Windows seem to be tacked on at random, curved lines intrude on one another, and the general look is cluttered and crowded, as if every component is fighting for space. You remember how those generative AI images looked a few years ago when you could only kind of, sort of tell what you were looking at? If we didn't know any better, we'd swear Lada AI-generated these images back in 2020 as a prank.

Add to all of this, Russia was experiencing some turbulent economic times in the late 1990s, bouncing back and forth between recession and recovery on a seemingly daily basis. We can't dig up a projected price point for the Rapan, but there's no way Russia's first electric car was going to be cheap. Oh, and before we forget to mention it, there was no charging infrastructure in the country at the time, either.

So let's run down the list of everything that made this car unappealing.

• Ugly.
• Expensive.
• Impossible to charge away from home.
• Underpowered,
• Incapable of reaching highway speeds.
• Designed to appeal to a small segment of wealthy, tech-motivated early adopters that barely existed in 1998.

Lada ultimately saw the writing on the wall when it failed to attract any serious investors, and mercifully put this one out of its misery without even attempting to bring it to market.

Now, we always try to say something positive about even the most unappealing cars... But try is the key word there. We've got nothing this time.

Sources: Lada, EPA.

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This article originally appeared on CarBuzz and is republished here with permission.