Sales of new cars in Russia may fall by 20% by the end of the year

Sales of new passenger cars by the end of 2025 may decrease by 20% compared to the previous year and reach 1.25 million cars. Sergey Tselikov, director of the Autostat analytical agency, told about this on May 13 at the Moscow International Automotive Forum IMAF during the MIMS 2025 exhibition in Moscow, the Izvestia correspondent reports.

"Loans will continue to be expensive, and bank rates will remain high. The "waiters" from the market probably won't go anywhere. Quite a lot of people live in the "just not China" paradigm — 95% of the car fleet consists of non-Chinese cars. Every 20th Russian has switched to a "Chinese", but many people do not want to switch to it. If the current market dynamics continues until the end of the year, we will see a drop of at least 20%," said Tselikov.

In order for the optimistic forecast to work, which assumes final sales for the year at the level of 1.4 million cars (-10% relative to 2024), serious changes must occur in the economy, he said. Representatives of banks assume that the Central Bank's key rate will remain at 21%, and it is expected to decrease to 19-20% by the end of the year, the analyst said.

"In May, we expect a slight drop relative to April. Sales in the region of 80-85 thousand cars will be a good result. In June, the market will be 90-100 thousand units. I expect a slight market recovery in the second half of the year. I don't see any significant growth factors yet. In order to reach the baseline forecast we announced earlier, which is -15% compared to last year, 1.325 million cars sold, the average sales should be 120-130 thousand passenger cars per month, even taking into account May and June," said Tselikov.

Swing with wheels: car sales fell by another quarter in April

The share of new car brands in the market is growing in Russia

On May 7, it became known that by the end of April, 102.1 thousand new passenger cars were sold in Russia, which is 25.5% less than in the same month last year. Haval Jolion became the Russian market leader in the crossover and SUV segment in April.