Rosseti and Renault Russia inked a strategic partnership agreement on implementation of the Program of Formation of Charging Infrastructure for ETransport in the Russian Federation. The document was signed at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum on June 19, 2015, by Rosseti’s General Director Oleg Budargin and Renault Russia General Director Andrei Pankov.

The agreement includes joint work in the following areas: legislative initiatives work out, technical standards and regulations for e-transport and charging infrastructure development, cooperation in the field of R&D as well as engineering, regulatory and technical support for infrastructure projects. The purchase of 50 electric Renault vehicles by Rosseti is also planned under the agreement.

'Our plans till 2020 also include consolidated efforts on integrated projects for the development of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, building of intelligent power supply system for rapid charging of electric vehicles using accumulators based on storage batteries, as well as the expansion of charging infrastructure in the territory of Russia,' Oleg Budargin said. 'In addition, we plan to replace part of our subsidiaries vehicles by E-Transport and to create appropriate charging infrastructure in Rosseti’s operation areas’.

Andrei Pankovpointed out that Renault’s experience, European leader in eco-friendly transport, will be especially important for Russia at this stage of the e-transport and charging infrastructure market development.

'On the one hand, Renault has unique experience in electric vehicle technologies, on the other hand – deep expertise of large-scale introduction of electric transport in Europe and in the World. At the end of 2014 Renault was ranked number one in sales of electric vehicles in Europe. As from this year we’ll start working actively in the Russian market and will continue to consistently strengthen our presence here. Renault is very interested in further expansion of charging infrastructure in Russia and scaling the positive experience of Moscow to other regions with the MOESK-EV Project to be the major one. On our part, we are ready to actively use the intellectual and technological resources to further facilitate the project,' Andrei Pankov said.