Motor function: What will car sales be like in 2027
Russian car market players expect a slight increase in new car sales in 2027. This was announced at the CarX 2026 conference by several representatives of automotive companies represented in our country. In addition, they talked about the positive and negative trends that affect the market size. Details can be found in the Izvestia material from the scene.
Recycling and other factors
For three months now, sales have been slower than last year, and there is no reason to expect any big growth, said Alexander Zubik, director of Strategy, planning and product Management at the Russian division of Great Wall Motors (GWM). If 130,000 new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles are sold in October, 140,000 in November, and 150,000 in December, the market will reach 1.4—1.42 million vehicles, he said during an event organized by the Autostat analytical agency.
In 2027, the company predicts a restrained growth of no more than 4% by the current year.
— We believe that the market will be about 1.4–1.45 million vehicles, including passenger and light commercial vehicles combined. It is clear that there are optimistic and pessimistic scenarios. Where the market goes depends on external macro factors. Nevertheless, we believe that circumstances are unlikely to develop in an extremely favorable way. A pessimistic scenario is equally unlikely," Zubik said.
Among the factors influencing the market growth, he named parallel imports, a reduction in the key rate to 12% and the release of new models. Among the negative factors are restrictions on the issuance of loans, problems with logistics, the ruble exchange rate, as well as the indexation of scrap collection.
— The impact of the recycling fee will probably not be so significant, because most of the key players have chosen a localization strategy, — said Alexander Zubik.
Not everyone localizes it.
In confirmation of his words, a representative of the Russian brand Tenet said that the company has completed the formation of a model range: five models are produced in Russia on a full cycle. Changan, in turn, has identified suppliers of local components and plans to expand into more budget segments thanks to the Russian assembly.
Geely, on the contrary, has no plans to assemble its cars in Russia yet. At the same time, the company plans to sell as many cars in 2027 as this year. Moreover, the bet, in addition to gasoline models, will be made on expensive hybrids and electric cars.
This decision does not really fit with the trend of moving to more mass-produced cars. If at the end of last year, alternative imports were mainly represented by premium new energy vehicles (NEV) from China, today these are mass-produced Toyota and Mazda models.
Today, they have quite a big impact on those market segments in which localized Russian manufacturers operate, noted Alexander Zubik. The share of premium models is also decreasing in the NEV segment, he added.
October will be better
Alexander Kulagin, executive director of Changan, suggested that next year will be more "pragmatic" rather than "super-optimistic and positive."
Ilya Perminov, the operating director of the Tenet brand, predicts the result of the current year at 1.35 million cars, and in 2027, in his opinion, the market will show recovery and grow by 5%.
Alexey Markov, Deputy General Director of Geely Motors in Russia, noted that there is an upward trend and October will be better than September. At the same time, he noted that he does not see strong growth factors in 2027. He urged automakers to make honest forecasts and not overfill their warehouses with supplies for next year.
Who determines the demand
1.4 million vehicles is a low—key forecast, according to Alexander Migal, Director of the Marketing Analysis Department at KAMAZ. In his opinion, the market capacity is at least 25% higher. However, whether this demand will be realized depends on the decision of those who drive cars aged 4-10 years, mostly brands that have left the Russian market.,
— Customers have been waiting for them to come back for some time, now they have stopped waiting. They also took advantage of the parallel import opportunities to upgrade a car of the same brand. These opportunities are now dwindling. And one way or another, they come to the decision to continue to operate the car (but the cost of maintenance increases here) or still buy a new car. And now this is a financially capacious, significant decision," the expert noted.
Prices will rise
There will be no more money on the market, and prices will gradually rise, said Alexey Podshchekoldin, president of the ROAD. Localization can smooth out price increases, but the process of compensating for recycling is difficult for local automakers, he noted.
— There are expectations that the assembly will bring us some kind of price slowdown due to the fact that the "scrap" was large last year and it seems that we should compensate for this money. There is a very complex KPI system. Bearings are Russian, axles are domestic, gearboxes are ours or not ours. Points are awarded for this. We came up with an assembly system that is difficult to perform. Now many enterprises receive compensation not on time and not in full, especially small companies," Podshchekoldin said.
According to the Autostat agency, according to the results of eight months, the average price of a new car increased by 8.2% compared to last year, to 3.43 million rubles.
The price of forecasts
At the same time, several experts noted that planning often does not take into account factors such as the fuel crisis that occurred this year, which, among other things, boosted sales in the NEV segment. If in 2025 many manufacturers were thinking about how to sell electric cars and hybrids, then in the middle of this year there was even a shortage in the NEV segment. In addition, interest in diesel-powered cars has grown.
General Director of Avtotorg (part of Avtotor Holding) Dmitry Stepin, as an example, told an instructive story about a distributor who had difficulty selling out a warehouse of diesel cars in 2025 and ordered gasoline cars instead in 2026.
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