Turkey's long-awaited dream to manufacture an indigenous car has started to see some concrete developments. As the design phase has been delivered, the country is now poised to see the first model.
On Friday, Dec. 27, the first model of the "made-in Turkey" car will be showcased in the Gebze district of the industrial province of Kocaeli, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Friday, responding to the journalists' questions in Kuala Lumpur where he attended a summit.
Following Erdoğan's announcement, Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank also shared a photograph with two veiled cars at the Gebze premises of Turkey's Automobile Joint Venture Group (TOGG) – formed by the five largest Turkish industrialists in November 2017 to develop the country's first domestically manufactured automobile. The location of the production headquarters for TOGG has recently been determined as the Information Technologies Valley (IT Valley) in Gebze.
TOGG aims to begin mass production in 2021 and launch the domestic automobile in the first half of 2022. The first vehicle to be released has been planned to be a completely-electric C-SUV. Plans state that up to five models will be in production by 2030. In the meantime, three existing models produced by the group will undergo a revamp.
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