Turkey unveils national electric car prototypes

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unveiled Friday prototypes of a domestically manufactured electric car that is hoped will hit the road within three years.

"Today we are witnessing together a historic day when Turkey's 60-year-old dream is coming true," Erdogan told a ceremony in the Kocaeli province in northwestern Turkey.

Turkey has a considerable auto manufacturing sector, but it mostly subsidiaries or partners of international carmakers.

"Turkey has become a country which is not only a market for new technologies but also a country which develops, produces and exports them to the world," he said.

Two models were unveiled on Thursday, but five are planned with an autonomy of 500 kilometres (300 miles) on a full charge.

Production is expected to get underway in 2022 by a consortium of five Turkish industrial firms dubbed TOGG.

Some 175,000 vehicles are expected to roll off the production line per year at a factory to be built south of Istanbul in the city of Bursa.