In Russia, no less than 41 percent fewer cars were sold in 2022 than the year before. Chinese brands have eagerly jumped into the gap left by European car brands since the war in Ukraine. Russians are also forced to buy many more cars from their own country.
This is reported by carnewschina.com, which is based on a report from Autostat Analytic Agency. They wrote the report on behalf of the Russian customs. After the outbreak of the war, Renault, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Ford and Toyota, among others, left Russia. The boycott is successful, as car sales fell dramatically (from 1.7 million to 680,000) and the number of dealers declined. Global inflation and chip shortages also affect the Russian figures.
Chinese car brands benefit
Like vultures, the Chinese car brands plunged into the Russian car market to fill the gap. At the beginning of 2022, the Chinese brands still had a market share of 10 percent, a year later that had almost quadrupled to 38 percent. Brands unknown to us such as Tank, Voyah, Skywell, Omoda and Kaiyi made their Russian debut, as did Hongqi, which is also for sale in the Netherlands.
The Russian car brands themselves were also forced to become more popular. At the beginning of 2022, 20 percent of cars in Russia came from home soil, a year later this had more than doubled to 41 percent. These are often licence-built Chinese cars. The Moskvich 3 is a copy of the Chinese JAC JS4. The Seres 3, which has been languishing in the Netherlands, is being built under license in Russia as Evolute i-Joy.
Share of European brands in Russia is shrinking
The withdrawal of the European, Japanese and Korean brands is clearly visible in the figures. The share of European car brands fell from 27 to 6 percent. The decline was also sharp for the brands from the Far East. Korean car brands fell from 24 to 9 percent, Japanese brands went from 18 to 6 percent.
The brand dealers are also noticing the negative consequences of the boycott. The share of European brand dealers fell from 27.5 percent (January 2022) to 22.8 percent (January 2023). The number of Japanese dealers decreased from 20.6 percent to 16.4 percent. American dealers are even more rare in Russia; they have a market share of 0.7 percent, compared to 4.1 percent last year. Chinese brand dealers, on the other hand, experienced an increase from 22.4 percent in 2022 to 33.3 percent at the beginning of this year.