Imports of new cars into Russia have been growing since mid-spring. At the same time, imports of used cars are decreasing. At the same time, the structure of imports in each country is changing significantly.

Experts explain that the trend of increasing new car imports and decreasing used car imports is due to the inability of domestic production to fully meet the demand for cars, as well as the tightening of customs clearance rules in some border countries. For detailed information, see the article in Kommersant.

Catching up and overtaking

In 10 months of 2024, Russia imported 795,000 new passenger cars, up 45.4% year-on-year. The data was provided by analyst Autostat.October was the best month in the last 12 years: 112,000 new cars were imported into Russia. The previous record was set in August 2012, when imports amounted to about 120,000 units.

Since mid-spring, new car imports have continued to grow. Thus, in April, about 58,000 vehicles were delivered to the Russian Federation, and in May this figure increased to 69,000. in June, the growth slowed down (about 70,000 imported vehicles), but into July, the growth was again significant - more than 81,000 vehicles. in August, passenger cars imported 89,000 new vehicles.

In August, passenger cars imported 89,000 new vehicles, and in September, the number increased by another 14,000 to 104,000 vehicles.

According to Autostat, the most imported new car last month was the Geely Monjaro. closely followed by the Chery Ruihu 4 PRO and Ruihu 7 PRO Max cars. The top five also included the Haval M6 and the Guangqi GS3 crossover.

Meanwhile, the structure of new car imports has changed significantly in just one month. As before, the largest number of cars is supplied to us from China. But if in September the share of “China” in the total number of imported new models was 78.6%, by the end of October it was more than 90%. Against this background, other exporters clearly lost their share. Belarus' exports fell from 6.4% to 2.1%, Kyrgyzstan's from 7.7% to 1.9%, Kazakhstan's from 4.2% to 1.2%.

to 1.2%.

Autostat experts noted that while new car imports are growing steadily, the supply of used cars from abroad is decreasing. According to the agency, July was the peak month for foreign used car imports, with more than 50,000 used cars imported. However, imports of used cars had fallen to 42,700 in September, and by the end of October they were down another 10 percent to 38,600.From January to October, Russia imported a total of 332,700 used passenger cars, down 2.9 percent year-on-year.

Japan has traditionally been the country's leader in terms of the number of used cars imported, despite the restrictions on car supply to Russia imposed as early as 2022. As a result, the top five most popular imported models among used cars were the Honda Freed, Honda Fit, Toyota Corolla, Nissan Note, and Honda Stepwgn. Meanwhile, Japan eased restrictions on hybrid models the day before.

Meanwhile, the structure of used car imports changed significantly this month. Japan's share increased from 46.8% to 60.2%, while Belarus' share decreased from 19.3% to 4.8%. Meanwhile, the supply of used cars from China increased from 5.8% to 9.1%.