Melex: A Polish Electrical Export Hit

No one but knew the phrase “electromobility” when engineers from the Mielec Communication Gear Manufacturing facility (PZL-Mielec), which was a part of the Mielec Plane Manufacturing facility, began constructing small, modern, quiet, and emission-free automobiles. These EVs shortly started to be exported everywhere in the world. 

Melex: useful EV from plane manufacturing facility

 It began within the Nineteen Seventies when a workforce of specialists was established within the Central Industrial District to help plane manufacturing. Because the identify of the plant implies, the enterprise’s focus on the time was all about aeronautical radio stations and different kinds of aviation tools like transponders, radio navigation devices, and the like.

What’s attention-grabbing and moderately uncommon on the time, notably within the socialist and centrally deliberate economic system of the then-Folks’s Republic of Poland, is that the administration of this manufacturing facility complicated didn’t shut itself off to new potentialities. 

It was an period of so-called “small stabilization,” which welcomed the influx of western forex, the event of trade, and vital investments. Sooner or later, an investor from the USA got here knocking on the door of the Wytwórnia Sprzętu Komunikacyjnego (Communication Gear Manufacturing facility). It was like a dream come true at the moment for a state-owned firm. The nation badly wanted – and tremendously appreciated – any supply of Western capital. And thus, the thought of making a small, compact, and, above all, utilitarian electrical car was born. 

Par for the course

The game of golf was gaining reputation within the USA, and distinguished gents wished to have the ability to transfer effectively and shortly across the in depth golf programs that have been bobbing up within the US like mushrooms after the rain. Very quickly in any respect, the corporate got here up with a design for a small, three-wheeled electrical car. It was known as the Melex. 

The automotive shortly gained reputation in the USA, changing into an export hit. American golf programs began to overflow with these attribute small white automobiles, most frequently seen driving round with golf golf equipment protruding of the again. Quickly, over 10,000 have been being shipped to the USA yearly. The Melex then unfold from golf programs to amusement parks, zoos, stadiums, and numerous different places.

 When martial legislation was imposed in Poland within the early Nineteen Eighties, Melex factories declined attributable to US sanctions and the dire state of the socialist economic system. Fortunately, that was not the top of the story. The Melex model was reborn within the newly free Poland, the place it’s nonetheless lively at present. 

New markets have emerged; within the USA, Canada, Europe, the Center East, the Far East, and Australia. There are additionally new kinds of automobiles: business, transport, postal, vans, small, and enormous. There at the moment are over 100 totally different designs, and solely one among them stays the identical golf cart everyone knows and love.