No airbags or anti-lock brakes on Russian cars as sanctions bite

PARIS: Russia will be forced to produce vehicles without basic safety features like airbags and anti-lock braking systems in order to restart local production, according to the previous owner of the country’s biggest car factory.

Renault SA chief executive officer Luca de Meo said the AvtoVaz plant, which the French manufacturer controlled until last month, will have to compromise on driver safety due to a lack of parts needed to make new cars.

"It’s already legal not to have ABS, airbags” in Russia, de Meo said today at a conference here, referring to the technology that prevents cars from skidding out of control.

Russia "will probably come back to specifications that we don’t do anymore.”

De Meo was speaking a month after Renault agreed to transfer its 2.2 billion-euro Russian business to state entities for a symbolic sum in what amounted to a nationalisation triggered by the war in Ukraine.

AvtoVaz - which produces the top-selling Lada brand - was taken over by a state-run automobile research institute known as NAMI.

AvtoVaz and other foreign manufacturers halted output in the months after Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine as sanctions crimped parts supplies.

The Russian company resumed production on June 8, Tass reported. Car sales in the country have collapsed since the war broke out.

De Meo said trade sanctions had barred entry of components needed to make vehicles at AvtoVaz’s sprawling Togliatti factory complex.

"It was impossible to operate as a classic manufacturer, the way we wanted to do it and with the level of technology that is good for our brand,” the CEO said.

"There are no parts that enter anymore.”

Russia’s Industry and Trade Ministry has said Togliatti will continue to make Ladas, while Moscow’s mayor Sergey Sobyanin has said Renault’s former plant near the city will produce Moskvich cars, a Soviet-era model.