More expensive for yourself: Russians are warned of rising prices for new cars
According to Avtostat, the weighted average price of a new passenger car in 2024 reached 3.12 million rubles. The growth of this indicator has slowed down in the past year, the agency's analysts note, but over the past five years, new cars have doubled in price. Prices will continue to rise in 2025, they believe. How much cars will rise in price - in the material "Izvestia".
Trillions for cars
Russians have already spent a record figure of 5 trillion rubles on new cars this year.
- There has never been such an amount, so much has never been spent on new cars. And this year we will overcome this 5 trillion mark a little bit, but we will overcome it. Money is getting cheaper, and more and more money in rubles will be invested in cars," said Sergei Tselikov, Director General of the Autostat analytical agency, at the Autostat Analytic Day conference
There is a stock in warehouses, demand has fallen, the previous increase in the utilization fee has not yet been recouped, analysts of Autostat note, so it is profitable to buy a car now. However, sales in November were lower than in October.
- There are a lot of negative factors: inflation, the duty will be raised once again. On the one hand, it slows down the market. On the other hand, it encourages: buy today - tomorrow it will be more expensive, - said Tselikov.
Nevertheless, the incomes of a certain part of Russians are growing. There are more people who can afford a car, Tselikov said.
Shock is not our way
Car dealers note a change in customer behavior
- If we take 11 months, we had the best results when there were some shocks: March and September. On January 1, we will once again raise the salvage tax. But there is really no such excitement as there was in September. The client does not react to it. Look at what happened to the dollar, it was 115 rubles at its peak, the yuan was 16.7. If there had been such a situation with the national currency a year ago, we would have seen a surge in traffic and contracting. In our peak, traffic grew by 10% and contracting by 6%. Clients have stopped reacting to global changes in the landscape, we have seen this for the first time in recent years, - said the director of new car sales department Nikolai Ivanov. At the same time, a record amount of money has accumulated on the deposits of Russians, he notes.
How prices will rise
According to Sergei Tselikov, cars will continue to rise in price in the new year: the weighted average price will increase by 10% over six months, that is, up to 3.4 million rubles.
Nikolai Ivanov agreed with the opinion of Tselikov, but believes that prices will rise by 10% during the year. Moreover, automakers will raise prices gradually, as it happened in 2015, when the dollar also rose significantly against the ruble.
The dynamics of price increases in cars supplied officially and those supplied by alternative means are different, Ivanov notes.
- All parallel imports will go up in price reactively. There is a direct correlation here. The yuan went up in price by 15% - the price of a car went up by 15%. Official supplies are a more complicated topic. It is no secret that official Chinese brands have a margin margin. There is a volume, signed with the headquarters, production plans, and there everyone will look at each other and smoothly raise prices. In December, they raised prices by 50-100 thousand rubles. Probably, it is not such a critical value. Although in general it affects the overall mass of the market," Ivanov believes.
Grigory Bylov, co-chairman of the Board of Directors of "Trinity Motors", considers it difficult to predict the price dynamics.
- It is clear that prices will go up, when they were going down? If someone has a desire to put money on deposit at 22%, withdraw it in a year and buy a car, it may be profitable, and maybe cars will go up in price even more - he said.
The price rise will have less impact on the premium segment, suggested Alexander Migal, Director for Strategic Marketing of KAMAZ PJSC.
- They will buy what they buy. If Lixiang adds a million rubles, it will still be twice as cheap as a BMW brought in via alternative imports. Someone who wants a BMW will go out and buy a BMW. As for the mass segment, the main blow will be there. And Chinese manufacturers will probably have to think about how they are going to sell their internal combustion engine models here," said Migal.
Talk about reduction
Experts say that the reasons for the price increase are the increase in the scrappage fee, the weak ruble and the high key rate, which makes loans less and less available.
- Last year, on average, the manufacturer took about 9 out of 16% on loans. If the manufacturer this year wants to support about the same monthly payment that was available last year, it will already be much more," Migal said.
In "Avtostat" believe that this year the market will reach sales volume of 1 million 590 thousand cars (+50% by 2023), but the forecast for 2025 is more pessimistic. The base scenario is 1 million 430 thousand cars minus 10% against last year, and in case of negative development of the situation, the market may fall by 20%. At the same time, Sergey Tselikov noted that the situation with sales in 2025 is difficult to predict and they may even grow.
Will "Lads" go up in price
Earlier, AvtoVAZ President Maxim Sokolov said in an interview with Izvestia that the company has no plans to raise prices for its products.
Maxim Kadakov, editor-in-chief of "Za Rulem", admitted that "Lads" may go up in price at least by the amount of inflation.
- Prices may be affected if something deteriorates in the relationship between countries, in the passage of payments. This applies equally to both imported cars and ours, as there is still import dependence on some components, raw materials," Kadakov believes. In his opinion, organizing the assembly of Chinese cars will not lead to lower prices.
- Everything that can be assembled by our hands is more expensive than to make it there and bring it in. It can be leveled by the return of "scrappage", but full refund is made only for fully localized cars, and we do not expect such among Chinese cars, - said Kadakov.
We need cheaper cars
Experts also stated about the deficit of budget segment models. Despite the fact that the main demand is concentrated in the price range up to 2 million rubles, except for "Lada" no one enters this segment with new products, said Alexander Migal.
Sergei Tselikov pointed out that in 2020-2021, six low-cost B-class models - Kia Rio, Hyundai Solaris, Skoda Rapid, Renault Logan and Sandero - occupied 20% of the market.
- Partially, Granta and Vesta took something in the B-segment, but the cars that would be well received by both cab drivers and consumers, affordable, reliable, simple foreign cars in this segment of the market, these 20% simply do not exist," said Tselikov.
