MOSCOW, October 10 (RIA Novosti) — Animal rescuers from the city of Tolyatti, Russia have met with AvtoVAZ, the city’s giant automaker, and asked them to alter elements of the Lada Kalina’s construction for the sake of protecting cats, Rossiyskaya Gazeta reports.
The proposed changes are related to the fact that cats seem to like to climb under the hood of the car for warmth. When the car starts up, they are often seriously injured, the source said.
AvtoVAZ is Russia’s largest automaker, controlled about 30 percent of the Russian car market in 2013. Its popular Kalina model was among the top ten most popular cars sold in Russia in 2013, according to Russian auto news site Kolyesa.ru.
According to Andrei Derbenev, the chief of a Tolyatti search and rescue organization, the Kalina’s construction makes it possible for cats to get into an area near the motor from under the vehicle, and when the car starts, they can get caught in the drive belt.
“In the month of September alone, we rescued ten cats from under the hoods of Kalinas. And those are just the cases that we’re called [about]. Sometimes drivers are able to get them out of there themselves,” Derbenev told Lenta.ru.
According to Tolyatti’s rescuers, 50 percent of the cats they’ve rescued received serious injuries, and 30 percent received non-serious injuries as a result of the defect in the car’s design. Twenty percent manage to come out completely unscathed, the source noted.
Derbenev said that he had a detailed, productive dialogue with the company, and given “how fast AvtoVAZ reacted to our proposal, I am hopeful that changes will be made,” Gazeta.ru quoted him as saying.
The carmaker’s engineering bureaus have been given the task of finding a workable solution to the problem. In addition to the Kalina, the new Vesta and XRAY models will also undergo an engineering check to ensure that the defect doesn’t affect them, Russian car magazine Za Rulem has said.
AvtoVAZ began producing the Lada Kalina in 2004. In 2013, the second generation of the vehicle was introduced.
The Russian car industry has seen something of a revival in recent years; AvtoVAZ has teamed up with international carmakers Renault and Nissan as part of its effort to replace the old, technologically obsolete models which the Lada brand had become associated with. The manufacturer’s newer models include the Lada Priora, Granta, Largus and several distinct models of the Kalina. Other Russian automakers have followed suit; the startup motor company MaRussia Motors is now producing a limited run of super sports cars; one of their cars will be participating at the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi this year.
