Russia should try to lure Chinese manufacturers to provide the capital-heavy and boring vehicle manufacturing, and then use that as a base to build self driving on top. That should decrease their R&D costs, scaling costs and iteration speed.why will Russia invest in self driving cars when most of population cannot afford it at prices that will be profitable for the manufacturers.
They did tests robotic machines in various situation including Syrian desert.
This $600K SUV launched. rock crawling with air suspension in this weight class. Tested in Arctic and Abu Dhabi.
Its like how China used Western chips to develop its electronics market and built so much stuff with that. Better take the L on car manufacturing and try to compete on other promising fields