Back in 1909, in Odesa, engineer Vasyl Stasiulevych assembled the first bus on the territory of modern Ukraine. The vehicle was assembled in his workshop.
Apostrophe has collected information about the first Ukrainian cars.
Vasyl Stasiulevych simply copied the design of a foreign-made truck and added to it one important element - a massive radiator. Historians began to consider Stasiulevych the father of the local automotive industry.
The next mention in automotive history was made in 1922, when a meeting of the Podilsky Gubernatorial Committee ordered the establishment of car repair shops in Vinnytsia, Proskuriv and Kamianets-Podilsky. Auto parts were brought there from all over the Gubernia (administrative unit) and used to assemble cars.
The first place was quickly taken by the Motor plant in Kamianets-Podilskyi, where there was a shortage of spare parts for buses. In four months, the plant's specialists developed a scheme and launched the production facilities for buses of their own design, borrowing an engine and chassis from an American White truck.
In 1923, a 12-seater bus called the Kamianets Motor was assembled. The transport ran along the route Kamianets-Podilskyi - Proskuriv - Vinnytsia, at a speed of 30 km/h, and remained the main means of transporting people and goods for a long time.
In 1935, in Kyiv, specialists of the Republica's Main Road Transport designed a four-seater passenger car with an aluminium body.
The vehicle was powered by 7 batteries and 2 electric motors with a capacity of 3 kW each, each of them set in motion a wheel. It was one of the first electric cars in the USSR to be produced in Ukraine
Ukraine was certainly not a "car country", but it had a great potential of local engineers and mechanics.
Earlier, we wrote about how the first aircraft were tested in Kyiv.