The T-34 was very slow firing tank. The Germans found they could out shoot the Soviets 3 or 4:1 in tank battles. The last thing you should do is copy that tank.
Had they stuck with the VK-2001/2 design plan as it was modified with sloped armor through 1941, they would have had a 25 ton tank with a Panzer III style turret with 50L60 gun able to up gun to the Pak 40 gun, when required. The design proceeded to a Vk 2023/24 models with bigger turret [Turret ring expanded from 1.35m-1.6m].
The top speed would be 56km and 50mm frontal armor sloped at 55°. It was essentially a Shortened Panther tank with a smaller turret, that matched the T-34 in armor and gun power, with out suffering from poor ROF. The VK 2xxx programme was begun in 1938 , which means mass production should have begun in 1942.
The sloped 50mm front hull would be impervious to all 76mm shell penetration , and the turret front should be the same if it uses the Vorepanzer spaced plates against the earlier AP rounds. Against later APBC shells, penetration should be at several hundred meters.
While the Panther was too large to produce in some firms, forcing the Panzer III to continue in production in an altered from [StuG-III], the VK-2xxx would have replaced the Panzer-III one for one on the production line. Going on multi year fixed price contracting thats potentially ~ 2600 in 1942 & 1943 ; unless the PzIV is also replaced with this tank. In that case the 1943 production could top out at ~ 6500 VK 2xxx and the 1944 production could also hit 6,000 mark.
The growth potential of this chassis should be to over 30 tons , which means a Panther Turret with 75L70 could be mounted ,with some compromise on armor if needed. In that case such a "VK Panther" tank could replace historical Panther production, resulting additional 7800 VK Panther produced in 1943 and > 15,000 in 1944.
Going on 'historical steel consumption' , the above tank building programme should run out of steel half way through the VKPanther programme in early 1944. However with increasing production efficiency, comes reduction in wastage, which means more % of steel reaches the final product. IF one chassis is used for all production, the resultant savings should just about make up enough steel to complete this building programme [for example you may have to make the first 1000 VK Panthers, conversions of older VK 2xxx].
To illustrate this the 1944 steel allocation for tank building programme amounted to 1.23 million tons [USSBS] . But the total tank production by mass in 1944 is only about 565,000 tons total. Now according to USSBS they destroyed about 10% of the German armor in the factories, which should bring this figure up to ~ 622,000 tons.
That means the 1944 tank industry was utilizing only 46-50% of the steel allocated, the rest was being wasted during the production process. Reportedly in 1941 the same efficiency was less than 1/2 that . In other words they were wasting more than 3/4 of the steel allocated to them. In the same year the LW efficency in Aluminum was on the order of 67% utilized and 33% wasted. Back in 1941 those figures were reversed.
Thats what happens when you shift production from runs of hundreds up to 1000 'cost plus annual production', over to 'fixed price multi year production runs' in the thousands and thousands.
So if you'd applied 'fixed price multi year production runs' in the thousands during 1941 , you'd have produced over twice as much tonnage of tanks. Further if the production runs are shifted from thousands to tens of thousands, a further evolution in waste reduction would occur.