There is a surplus of Chinese cars in car dealers' warehouses in Russia

The Russian car market has been flooded with Chinese cars. According to experts and industry participants, there are enough cars imported into the country to satisfy the market until April, Kommersant reported on December 26.

Oleg Moseyev, an independent auto expert, estimated the stock of Chinese brand cars at the end of the year at 360 thousand units, excluding parallel imports. Renat Tyukteev, deputy general director for new car sales at Avilon AG, gave similar data - 350 thousand cars. According to Sergey Tselikov, Director of the analytical agency "Avtostat", there are 200-250 thousand cars in warehouses - this is more than the oversupply at the end of last year (175 thousand units).

According to experts, car dealers underestimated the growth of the Central Bank rate, the surplus was caused by the initially overestimated plans of Chinese car companies for deliveries to the Russian market, which brought cars with a reserve before the increase in the utilization fee and did not predict the market decline starting from November.

Besides, not all the stock was sold out in September and October, which continued to grow in November and December against the background of market cooling, experts noted. However, the situation with overstocking will not lead to lower prices, despite the fact that it is not easy to maintain warehouses in conditions of high Central Bank rate, experts believe.

Downstream: why new car sales have fallen in Russia

Market participants forecast further decline in sales of cars

December 23, it was reported that from January to November 2024, Russians spent Br4.24 trillion on new cars. Of these, foreign cars accounted for 85.6% of this amount. At the end of 11 months of this year, the weighted average price of a new car in Russia amounted to 2.97 million rubles. At the same time, the weighted average price of a foreign car amounted to Br3.71 million, while the Russian car - Br1.35 million.

On December 18, Nikolai Ivanov, Director of the New Car Department at Rolf, said that some Chinese car brands, such as Livan, Kaiyi, SWM and Foton, may leave the Russian market in 2025.