Russia's richest oligarch wants to launch a city car

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Biggs is the editor of TechCrunch Gadgets. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at john@techcrunch.com. → Learn More

So you own the New Jersey Nets and you have a few billion in assets. And you’re Russian. What do you do next?

You start a line of $12,000 city cars designed to look sort of like the Smart car but more Slavic. The oligarch, Mikhail Prokhorov, is investing $141 million in the Yarovit Motors plant and will create a hybrid or electric vehicle.

From the images it seems you’ll be able to dock your phone into the car and use it as a read-out, something decidedly futuristic. However, considering the success thus far of Russian-made vehicles (the Lada comes to mind) I’d be worried about the generally salability of these things.

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