Purchases of vehicles from Asian nation’s automakers reach fresh records as Russians ‘vote with their wallets’

Sales of Chinese cars in Russia have hit fresh records after the country became the largest export destination for the Asian nation’s automakers when sanctions forced western brands to cut ties with Moscow.

Surging in Russian sales have helped Chinese carmakers at a time when Beijing faces higher tariffs on electric vehicle exports from Washington and Brussels — while engineering a rapid change in Russian auto culture.

Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine sparked a sharp decline in sales of vehicles from the European, Korean and Japanese carmakers that previously dominated the country’s car market.

At the time of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, their brands made up 69 per cent of all sales, according to the Avtostat analytics agency. They now have a market share of just 8.5 per cent, while Chinese manufacturers’ share over the same period has risen from 9 per cent to 57 per cent.

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      • Mechanize
        51·
        8 hours ago

        Nice data, but I think we should take a broader view too:

        https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?end=2023&locations=RU-IN&start=2019

        I semi randomly picked India because it is part of BRICS and had a similar economic trajectory: It is quite interesting playing with all those nobs and labels.

        In this context I think PPP - which you showed - is a good indicator of the internal quality of living, but as far as I understand it, it has an hard time showing the difference in quality and standards of the consumer products between countries, so a dip in nominal GDP is an interesting context with the PPP adjusted rise. Less expensive things, because they are less regulated?

        Aside from that Russia has almost completely pivoted to a war economy which, as far as I know, tends to give a big initial boost but it stresses and makes the real (for lack of a better term) economy crash in the long run.

        What do you think about this? It is an interesting topic.

      • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
        61·
        8 hours ago

        The RF’s central bankers keep trying to tank their economy but it isn’t working because of all the direct investment required to offset sanctions. They are maxing out debt costs, basically, trying the neoliberal “fighting inflation” strategy that does the exact opposite most of the time. It makes them precarious economically despite how well they’re doing but for a very different reason than “sanctions are working”. If they kicked out their neoliberals it would be smooth sailing.

      • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
        61·
        6 hours ago

        We have trackable proof of market shifts, I’m not sure what you mean here. The RF’s economic conditions aren’t wonderland, but the war-time economy and increased focus on domestic production means the sanctions backfired a bit, and pushed Russia towards China instead. This is reflected in the market shift.

      • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
        71·
        8 hours ago

        Car sales on the RF are up something like 50% over last year and last year had relatively normal numbers.