OREANDA-NEWS. Gas engine KAMAZ and NEFAZ vehicles were presented at a meeting of the Board of Tatarstan’s Ministry of Transport and Road Building which was held in Kazan with the participation of Maksim Sokolov, Russia’s Minister of Transport.

The Board discussed the main development directions of the transport sector for the nearest five years. Lenar Safin, Head of Tatarstan’s Ministry of Transport, submitted several key projects in which Tatarstan will invest on the threshold of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. One of the directions is a mass conversion to CNG vehicles. Tatarstan’s Minister reminded that the program of development of the CNG market till 2030 had been approved with the support of JSC GAZPROM in Tatarstan that year. Under the program, it is planned to convert half of public transport, one third of municipal vehicles and the same share of construction vehicles to natural gas. Tatarstan has already obtained 262 buses for 932.6 million roubles, 655 million roubles of which is a subsidy of the federal center.

Watching the presentation of KAMAZ products, the participants of the event learned which CNG vehicles one can buy today. Rafael Batyrshin, Director General of the RariTEK company (OJSC KAMAZ’s distributor of gas-powered vehicles), demonstrated Maksim Sokolov several models of series-produced gas-powered vehicles. The exhibits included a new product – the two-axle garbage truck CMZL-9G based on the KAMAZ-4308 gas-powered chassis. The net volume of its body is nine cubic meters, and the cruising range of this methane-powered vehicle is 300 km. Now frequently seen on the streets of Tatarstan’s large cities, a CNG city bus NEFAZ-5299-30-31 with a characteristic feature – a case with tanks on its reinforced roof – was also presented there. Besides, the visitors were shown a multipurpose road machine ED-405AG which can operate as a dump truck or as a street cleaner or as a sanding truck depending on the season.

At the meeting of the Board, Lenar Safin announced an economic effect from the use of gas engine buses. According to him, an analysis of their operation showed that total fuel costs made 1.68 million roubles, which is more than twice as efficient as the use of diesel fuel (3.45 million roubles). Tatarstan’s Minister of Transport outlined expected prospects from implementation of this program. “The fleet of vehicles running on gas motor fuel will be expanded,” Mr. Safin noted. “The volume of natural gas consumption will grow by 2.7 billion cubic metres, the volume of consumption of traditional fuels will reduce by 2.6 billion litres, and consequently, emissions from vehicles will decrease by 19 thousand tonnes a year by 2024.”