An eco-investment fund is rolling out thousands of charging stations for electric cars across Russia. But despite the green drive, critics say the future is not electric.

Space is at a premium on Moscow’s roadways, and clean air is hard to come by.

But if the CEO of Revolta has anything to do with it, the game may be changing – with a vast network of 2,000 charging stations for battery-powered cars sprouting up in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Samara and Kaluga.

The company and its American investors claim the 1.5 billion rubles sunk into this project will clear cities of air pollution, and keep roads quieter. This sounds perfect for the frazzled nerves of commuters, who move within a 35 kilometer radius regularly. Revolta thinks it is the start of a new trend.

“I drive an i-MiEV, for example,” Maxim Osorin, Revolta CEO, told RT. “Every second traffic light stop I get a lot of attention from a lot of people around, because people have a very little opportunity to see cars on the go and when an X-5 owner sees this little car pass him by, it’s really trendy.”

There is no denying that top-of-the-line models are not cheap, though total the total cost of ownership is quite low. You are not paying for the ever-changing gas prices or maintaining oil, and fewer moving parts mean fewer repairs. A big question on everybody’s mind is, however, resale value.

“In terms of resale, one of the big challenges is what is residual value of the battery – the value of the battery that was used in a car for a period of time,” Paul Mitchell, President and CEO of Energy Systems Network, told RT. “It may be the case that it’s not as valuable in the car as taken off and used for storage with grid companies and utility companies. This is a project that we’ve been working on in the US at Nissan and General Motors. And many other auto makers are looking at what they call secondary use of electric vehicle batteries, as a way of addressing this very issue of residual value. So the value of the battery may be worth more than the car after six to ten years.”

Usually small, electric cars may not look like much, but they have actually got plenty of “pick up and go." Their buyers will not have to wait in line for petrol, or even to power up – because when you park you plug in, so you are always ready to go.

“We have charging stations at our office,” Osorin told RT. “It solves the problem, I mean cars go very actively all day and they go farther than the 120 kilometers of the active range. You have no problem because the mentality is very different. With a normal gasoline-powered car, you wait until your gauge goes to zero then you go refill it. With battery power it’s very different. Once you’re parked, you just plug it in.”

Still there are worries. A lack of convenient charging stations is a worry among drivers.

And although the stations are capable of charging any type of electric vehicle, a lack of available infrastructure is another real fear among prospective buyers.

It is also no secret that batteries do not mix with extreme temperatures, something Russia has an abundance of. The success of this project thus lies in the convenience and cost-effectiveness of its components.