OREANDA-NEWS In July, 136,221 new passenger cars were sold in Russia — an increase of 42.4 percent compared to the same month last year. Izvestia writes about this with reference to the data of the Autostat agency.

Compared to June, sales of new cars increased by 9.5 percent. At the same time, almost all car brands in the mass segment showed growth last month. The drop in the number of cars sold in the Russian Federation was noted only by Moskvich, JAC and Toyota — by 17.9, 28.2 and 47.7 percent, respectively.

Sergey Udalov, Executive Director of Autostat, noted that the share of Chinese automakers in the Russian market had stabilized in July, reaching 61 percent, an increase of 10 percent over the year. In the premium segment, the share of brands from China was even higher at the end of last month, 81 percent. A number of brands, such as Hongqi, Lixiang, Aito, Zeekr, sales jumped 3-6 times over the year. However, the future prospects of Zeekr in the Russian market are in doubt due to the possible blocking of a number of functions in machines supplied to the country unofficially.

AvtoVAZ retained the leadership in the number of cars sold in July with a result of 35,619 units. The top five best-selling brands also included Haval (16,671 cars), Chery (14,228 cars), Geely (13,098 units) and Changan (11,403 units).

Ilya Petrov, Director of Retail Sales at Avilon AG, said that since July there has been a rush in demand for cars in Russia against the background of news about an increase in the Central Bank rate and recycling, consumers want to make a purchase in the near future. However, in his opinion, the current sales growth is a short—term phenomenon, and the market is expected to shrink in September. According to Igor Morzharetto, partner of the Autostat agency, "you can forget about the 1.5 million cars sold at the end of the year." Most likely, by the end of the year it will be about 1.3 million, he added.

By the end of July, the average price of a new car in Russia decreased by 1 percent compared to June and dropped to 3.57 million rubles. In annual terms, the decline was more than 6 percent — in July 2023, the average cost of new cars in Russia was 3.8 million rubles.