It feels like it’s been a while since anyone’s shown off a properly unfortunate car. The Youabian Puma is a decade old, the Ssanyong Rodius is ancient now, and even the VinFast VF8 is at least decent to look at. Well, the dry spell ends now. Researchers in Russia have unveiled a new prototype electric car called the Amber, and oh God it’s hideous.
The Amber is a…thing that’s been built by Moscow Polytechnic University as the forerunner for an impending production car. I know we’re pro-car at The Autopian, but this thing seems like an am-car, a thoroughly amateur attempt at motoring that lacks the grace and talent of, well, any other current automaker on the face of this pale blue dot.
It looks like Postman Pat’s red van had angry sex with a G-Wiz, and nine months later, the end result hit every branch of the ugly tree on the way down. It has a panicked face, massive ungainly unbroken surfaces on each bodyside, and it elicits a ton of questions. Why does it sit on its wheels like a wooly mammoth on roller skates? Why does it have two holes on the right side of the body? Why is the bottom of each door two feet off the ground? Did anyone with eyes actually sign off on the styling of the Amber?
You might wonder how Russia is managing to build an electric car, considering the sorts of sanctions it’s under right now. Well, major electric drivetrain components like the battery pack, inverter, an electric motor are claimed to be all Russian, a questionable claim when Russia relies on China for lots of electronic things. Allegedly, this car is more about the hardware underneath than the styling, as World Today News reports that ““Avtotor” notes that the future car will look different from the presented test model.” For what it’s worth, the production car will apparently be classified as a heavy quadricycle, so take that information as you will.
When developing a technological testbed, manufacturers tend to move in one of two directions: Either use a lot of effort to produce a near-production spec body that lets engineers actually test efficiency, or put in no effort at all and chop up an existing car as a mule. This prototype seems to have seen some sweat go into making it look positively hideous. Make no mistake, despite the windscreen and side mirrors seemingly sourced from another car, the Amber was styled like this on purpose.
As per Russian automotive website Auto, “Production of Amber in Kaliningrad should begin in 2025.” Claims of mass production in 2025 seem dubious, especially if this technological testbed isn’t virtually identical to the finished product. Ford took nearly three years to go from the unveiling of an electric F-150 prototype to the start of F-150 Lightning production, and that thing borrows the bulk of its bodywork from an existing vehicle. To go from something that scares small animals to a production car in about two years? Sure, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Make no mistake, the Amber is a deeply unfortunate vehicle, likely reflecting the terrible conditions that led to its birth. It’s less attractive than an open wound, makes fabulous claims about its technology that most people would be skeptical about, and comes with a bit of backpedaling. Let’s hope the production car looks radically different from the prototype, because it doesn’t seem difficult to do better than this.
(Photo credits: Moscow Polytechnic University)
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Oh, but y’all wanted to clown my boy Ed and his Aitekx Robotruck.
I don’t know which I am more skeptical about. The Robotruck or this.
Who says Ed can’t scam US and Russian buyers simultaneously with different products?
How the hell are you supposed to see out of that thing? The windshield isn’t that big and you’ve got that huge nose that, just for extra fun, has a big chin-like protrusion on the bottom that you will absolutely run into something because it sticks out so far from the end of the hood, which is where the sightline presumably ends. And those side windows…you couldn’t even get a pizza box through one of those, let alone see anything out of them. Thankfully we’ve been spared seeing the rear end of this thing, but will there even be a rear window? I’m picturing something absurdly tiny, like the split windows on early VW Beetles.
Visibility, how does it work?!
What is the hole in the side for? We know it’s not for dragoning because you wouldn’t be able to find a paper bag large enough to put over the car.
Wrong answers only please.
Obvious they’re portcullises for when you use it to ford rivers.
Why wouldn’t the passengers want to see the fish?!
To pump fentanyl gas in to sedate the passengers, the only way they will stay inside
Have you seen Snowpiercer? Somewhere there’s a small Russian child being forced to reach into those holes and perform some mechanical operation that Western sanctions have precluded producing a part to do.
Yes I have.. It could also be used from the inside to extend your arm out the hole into the Russian winter and then shatter the frozen arm as punishment for designing this car.
I’ve changed my answer. The car is clearly inflatable, so those must be the air input and exhaust valves.
That was a truly stupid movie. Why did everyone live on a train that could never stop again? (I don’t really want to know.)
There was a TV show version too. Ran 3 seasons and they completed filming on a 4th.
Because they slept through their thermodynamics classes in college?
(The train is a perpetual motion machine that is powered by the movement of the wheels which obviously makes no goddamn sense.)
(I know you said you didn’t want to know and I apologize for my inability to just not chime in.)
Speed holes. Makes it go extra fast.
Turn signals. Either the front or rear passenger can indicate by sticking their arm out.
Exhaust ports for the two on-board generators needed to keep that bank of lead-acid batteries topped off.
They’re for passing bribes out of to the police. Less heat loss.
Maybe it’s like a Buick porti-vent, but since it’s an electric motor, they can only have 1 on the car and there’s no way to be symmetrical.
One is the thermal exhaust port and it’s behind the other, which is the main port. They’re from the Death Star in the first Star Wars movie.
It’s to shoot your crossbow from, obviously.
Holes are oarlocks.
Elon says Cybertruck is boat. Russian electric car must be boat. Put oarlock on sides.
No, no, must have two oarlock, capitalist lackey!
Hey, DALL-E, create an an electric vehicle with a front end based on C-3PIO’s face, high doors, and small wheels.
This car is hereby renamed R-3PO.
https://imperialtalker.com/2020/03/06/r-3po-the-red-protocol-droid/
Kaliningrad? Seems to be an avoidable logistical challenge. Would seem to make more sense to build it somewhere in the steppes or have they become too unpopulated from sending them into a meat grinder?
I think it’s an intentional move to spread jobs and economic development beyond the current major automotive centers in Samara and Nizhny Novgorod
Or to avoid infecting current major automotive centers with this .. taint
Are the.. “headlights” made from aftermarket halo fog lights? They are too small to be Jeep style headlights.
“mo…ther…. fa….ther… Kill me. Please… kill me”
-This car
It looks like it’s allergic to bees
r/BotchedPlasticSurgery
They screwed up by making this red. You need the Amber to be the color of your energy. Shades of gold display naturally.
Came here to make a 311 reference. You beat me to it.
I disagree with your take…this has a “pushing the envelope” kind of uniqueness I see in some concept cars. Personally, I kinda like it.
Still better than the back of a Nissan Cube…although now I realize I don’t know what the back end of this looks like. Hopefully it at least has the grace to be mostly symmetrical.
Well, panel gaps are better than any Tesla prototype. And some final versions too.
It seems that they chopped the body off, put batteries below and tried to put everything together again with tons of bondo.
Color doesn’t help either. Maybe black would look like a little better.
Russian things often seem like they don’t work very well. The political system, the army, and this car are three good examples.
Counterpoint: AK-47 and the Planar/Autoterm Diesel Air Heater. One of these is installed in my namesake vehicle and works very well indeed.
I give up. Which one?
Yes.
Yeah, but Romanian AK-47s are noticeably better quality than Russian ones
So Russia is good at making things that warm (duh) and things that kill?
Yes, but enough talk about vodka!
Russian telescope optics are absolutely world class though.
I get the feeling they used a Fiat Multipla as a starting point for this… vehicle.
For those fixated on cars having grilles that are fake and/or entirely too large, this might be the dream machine.
Fix the front on that and it’s not terrible. Then it becomes odd and meh.
2018ish Lada Vesta Cross was the starting point and dropped onto an electric chassis
Evocative of a Subaru, that Vesta Cross. But then those high mount lights, and that really unfortunate front design, make things just weird.
Is this the Russia’s answer to 007’s submersible Lotus Esprit? The tiny windows and the beyond awkward proportions makes it look more like a submarine than a car.
Imagine Putin in the red amber, flying down tight serpentine roads with a beautiful Devushka by his side, chased by American special forces..
If my dog had a face like that, I’d shave his ass and teach him to walk backwards.
Reminds me of the talking chair from Pee Wee’s Playhouse.
Or those big red moon boots that were all over TikTok/Instagram a while back.
Da.
In Russia, EV drives you!
Only if you properly use the Glory Ports on the passenger side correctly.
An Amber engineer arrives at customs. He carries two very large and heavy suitcases. On his wrist is a new Russian-made watch. He tells the customs man: “This is a new Russian watch. It’s a wonder unknown in other countries. You see, it shows time, the rate of your pulse beats, the phases of the Moon, the weather in Warsaw, Moscow, and New York, and more and more!”
“Yes, it’s a wonder,” the customs man agrees. “And what is it you have in these big suitcases?”
“Oh, it’s just the batteries for that watch.”
That big ass battery pack/floor reminds me so much of this joke.
Dorbroye utro fellow capitalists! We only put the minimal amount of windows in Amber, so you don’t have to look around and be reminded that you’re still in Russia!
They really are regressing to the Soviet days. Brezhnev would be proud.
The vertical distance between the grey rocker panel and the bottom of the door looks suspiciously like the height of a deep-cycle lead-acid battery
A face only a mother could love, Ooofff
The naked existential terror in those eyes is apropos.
I love my kids but I would … struggle if they looked like this.
Well, there goes my lunch I just ate…