Parallel imports are declining, and this is one of several trends in the Russian car market that Autostat has identified. Import volumes are growing, while the share of “gray” cars is falling, the market capacity has grown to record levels, but the share of “Chinese” cars has reached its limit. In addition, the growth in sales of electric cars has “fizzled out,” but hybrids, on the contrary, are gaining momentum.
According to Autostat director Sergei Tselikov, over the past three years the structure of the Russian market for new passenger cars has changed dramatically. For example, in 2020, a share of 75 percent was held by global brands – Japanese (Toyota and others), Korean (Hyundai and Kia) and European (Renault, Volkswagen and others). By the end of 2024, their share had dropped to 10 percent, due to the cessation of supplies and production. But the “Chinese” now own 59 percent of the market, another 31 percent belongs to domestic brands.
“The share of Chinese brands will no longer grow,” Tselikov believes, “but a certain layer of their pseudo-brands will grow (artificial brands created by large Chinese automakers. We will classify some of them (and already classify them) as Russian if they created specifically for Russia to evade sanctions, and some to avoid Chinese ones.”
Car deliveries from South Korea have dropped to a minimum Russians have begun to cancel electronic vehicle registration certificates due to a new type of fraud at customs It will become more difficult to transport cars from Japan to Russia
The number of cars imported into Russia through parallel imports is also rapidly decreasing: if in 2022-2023 they accounted for 35-37 percent, then in 2024 alternative supplies were “strangled” by recycling collection. At the same time, imports generally picked up, but supply volumes grew only until October.
As for the “green” segment of the market, its growth rate has slowed down. “Sales of pure electric vehicles (BEVs) showed growth until April 2024, but after changes in import conditions, the monthly sales volume of BEVs decreased by almost half,” notes Avtomat. At the same time, 2024 was a year of rapid growth in the hybrid (HEV) segment, primarily due to sequential hybrid models from brands such as Lixiang, Voyah and Aito.
Another trend is the increase in the average price of a new car. Now it exceeds three million rubles – three times more than 10 years ago. The market capacity, in turn, has grown to five trillion rubles, and so much money has never been spent on new cars in our country before.
Version 2.0: new and updated “white” models
