The volume of alternative imports of passenger cars increased by 94% in Russia

In the first four months of this year, 53.5 thousand new passenger cars were imported into Russia under alternative import schemes, which is 94% more than in January-April last year. Sergey Tselikov, director of the Autostat analytical agency, told about this in his Telegram channel on May 21.

As the expert noted, alternative imports had previously been declining for two years: in 2024 by 20% (181.2 thousand units per year), and in 2025 by 5% (172 thousand units per year).

Most often, passenger cars are brought to Russia through alternative import schemes through Kyrgyzstan, which accounts for more than 40% of shipments bypassing official distributors (22.1 thousand cars), said Tselikov.

36% of cars in this segment (19.3 thousand cars) were imported directly from China in this way. Both directions have grown significantly compared to last year — by 185% and 106%, respectively. At the same time, supplies via Belarus decreased by 20% (to 4.1 thousand units), and its share in the structure of alternative imports fell to 7.7%. The top 5 destinations also include Japan and South Korea (2.5 thousand and 2.2 thousand units, respectively).

69.8% of new cars delivered to Russia under alternative schemes were produced in China (37.3 thousand units). These are mainly models of global brands such as Toyota, Mazda, Volkswagen, Audi and BMW. Germany is in second place with a significant gap (6.3 thousand units; 11.8%), Japan is in third (4.5 thousand units; 8.3%).

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On this day, it was reported that in the first four months of this year, 105.5 thousand Chinese brand cars were resold on the Russian secondary market. This is 45.5% more than in January-April last year, when 72.8 thousand used Chinese cars were registered.