Turkey's first indigenous car will be based on fully local designs, Bora Koçak, head of the automotive division of Anadolu Group, one of the five Turkish companies collaborating on the domestic car project, said yesterday.

Koçak said Turkey's automobile market is the fifth largest in Europe and highly dynamic.

He stressed that the market has preserved its dynamism, despite a nearly 30 percent depreciation in Turkish lira. Koçak said that the Turkish market boasts highly viable demand and a dense young population, where around 1 million automobiles are sold every year regardless of three to four times more tax on automobiles compared to Western European countries.

Detailing the indigenous automobile project, carried out by the Joint Venture Group, Koçak said Turkey's first indigenous automobile will be 100 percent electric and three different cars based on one platform will be offered to the market at intervals of about one to one-and-a-half years."We continue to strive to remain true to the date announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. We want to develop and deliver the first prototypes by the end of 2019 and enter production in 2022. At this moment there is no deviation to that date," Koçak said, adding that currently, they are in the process of identifying and selecting the technology opportunities, company formation, and management staff.The project is going ahead in line with the schedule. We believe that Turkey will make proper use of this transformation, come up with its own brand and produce a car that features world-class technology," he said.

"The first concrete results that the consumer would see will be the prototype, which is scheduled be unveiled by the end of 2019."

"We are very close to the formation of the company. We have come to the stage of setting it up and forming the management team in the coming days," Koçak said, stating that they run all the technology-related processes with a committee formed by the member companies of the Joint Venture Group.

Elaborating on the automobile's design process, Koçak said they have been working on this issue for about two months now and the related studies have started to pick up the pace.

"Selection, evaluation and the research process can take a lot of time. We have come close to the end of these stages. So, I think we can accelerate a bit more now," he noted.

He said the vehicles will be fully designed in Turkey. "This will be something completely domestic and national," Koçak said.