Russian Auto Industry

Ingenious. Is it Russian?

https://evocargo.com/

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211010005074/en/Evocargo-Enters-European-and-Middle-Eastern-Markets-With-Market-Proven-Logistics-Service-Delivered-by-Its-Autonomous-Trucks

Looks like a Russian company with an international footprint.

kvs wrote:https://evocargo.com/

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211010005074/en/Evocargo-Enters-European-and-Middle-Eastern-Markets-With-Market-Proven-Logistics-Service-Delivered-by-Its-Autonomous-Trucks

Looks like a Russian company with an international footprint.  

A small addition - these cars are assembled on the basis of the UAZ chassis.

Truck sales in Russia on course for all-time record, 12.10.2023.

More than 120,000 new vehicles were sold in the country in the first 11 months of the year.

Sales of new trucks in Russia have been skyrocketing this year, with sales topping 128,000 vehicles between January and November, according to data published this week by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Statistics show that during the 11-month reporting period, truck sales reached 128,069 vehicles, an 81.5% annual increase. In November alone, 12,067 trucks were sold in the country. Analysts expect final sales for 2023 to surpass the all-time high of 128,900, recorded in 2012.

Of the trucks sold in Russia so far this year, giant KAMAZ has sold the largest number, 26,066 vehicles, taking a 20% share of the market. It was followed by Chinese manufacturers Sitrak (21,678), Shacman (18,540), and FAW (11,782).

Experts have noted that the boom in truck sales stems from several factors. With Western sanctions placed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, many carmakers left the country’s market, including Volvo Trucks, Mercedes, Scania, MAN, DAF, Iveco, Renault, Mitsubishi, Fuso, and Isuzu. As a result, last year many Russian importers were either unable to quickly find replacements or decided to postpone new truck purchases. This year, according to a recent report by consultants at Expert RA, most large motor carriers and construction companies have instead been “actively covering the fleet deficit” with Chinese vehicles.

“In conditions when manufacturers from Europe stopped supplying cars and spare parts and revoked service licenses, we had to choose Chinese cars,” the head of the road services firm Avtoban Motor Transport, Konstantin Kourov, told Vedomosti news outlet.

According to him, there are “no problems” with the supply of dump trucks and spare parts from China, and the price of a Chinese dump truck can be up to three times lower than that of an EU-made one.

Another reason for the demand for trucks was the rapid growth of cargo transportation by road amid the rise in Russia’s trade with Asian partners and the active implementation of large infrastructure projects. According to Rosstat, between January and September, vehicle freight turnover in the country jumped by 17.9% year-on-year.

Since the start of the year, sales of new cars in Russia have surged by 58.8%, amounting to roughly 1.2 million vehicles.

https://www.rt.com/business/588824-truck-sales-russia-record/

I think Russia needs to put heavy tariffs on Western vehicle gray imports. The gray imports already served their purpose here. Of course gray imports of vehicle parts should continue.

I think Russia needs to put heavy tariffs on Western vehicle gray imports. The gray imports already served their purpose here. Of course gray imports of vehicle parts should continue. wrote:

If Russia exports to only friendly countries, this works. If Russia quits the WTO that is good too..If you put such tariffs up, you risk revenge tariffs against you by the WTO or even sanctions..

Swgman_BK wrote:If Russia exports to only friendly countries, this works. If Russia quits the WTO that is good too..If you put such tariffs up, you risk revenge tariffs against you by the WTO or even sanctions..

What else can the West sanction anyway? They cut all their major exports already.

What else can the West sanction anyway? They cut all their major exports already. wrote:

No not the West.. But the rest of the sensible world..

What else can the West sanction anyway? They cut all their major exports already. wrote:

Best case scenario is for Russia to quit the WTO. It never helped Russia with crap anyway. Might as well quit. Then Russia will be free to outright say, "NO CARS FROM THE EU, US AND ALL G7 STATES THAT ARENT OUR FRIENDS." Infact, in such a situation, Russia can say NO IMPORTED ANYTHING WE DONT ALREADY MAKE. Even if sanctions are lifted

Russia can say NO IMPORTED ANYTHING WE DONT ALREADY MAKE. Even if sanctions are lifted wrote:

This is the part where Russia experiences 20% GDP in the 1st 1/4 of the year..And ends the year with such.. Yes, in the long run it limits Russian economic growth but the Russian economy will be based on Russian needs and wants and not a competition with foreign suppliers which is what I believe an economy should be. It should cover all the requirements of the locals and not be all about exports.. It should advance at the same pace as peoples income. Do that and you have a truly rich country. Russia can achieve this if she works hard. A Russia where everything you need is found in Russia and can be made in Russia if it doesnt exist yet. What would the need to import be bolstered by?

what I find interesting is that they have swung the production to Izheskv for the Largus .... wheelbase 2900mm
(overturning the sabotage by that Swedish twat ... and getting Vesta back into the main factory )

Vesta is on a Rus platform ... not Renault

now they intend to build the Lada Aura back in Togliatti .... yep 2900mm wheelbase

these guys are so smart .....
Aura will have a 2900mm Crossover twin ... plain as day
and they can make their own version of a commercial Largus if need be on the same chassis
.... ie cut out Renault royalties

clever
meanwhile Iran has given up on launching its own brands in Russia
re Chinese tsunami .... so plain as day their strategy is now to be a major component supplier ....

as are China .... and India (via excess trade in rupees)

what is Russia's competitive advantage ?
steel components ..... other metals
and ... labour costs under the 1x currency umbrella

you can understand your cost structure much better if your labour and material costs ... are under the same currency
makes forward planning so much easier ....

even better their internal river network gives them a major competitive cost advantage for big and heavy components

dumbarse europeans had it in the palm of their hands .... now it will destroy them ...

Von der Liar .... Olaf the Dumb ..... seriously ..... 2x of the dumbest human beings that ever walked the Earth

who is the biggest loser with Rus/Iran/Egypt pushing into ME and Africa ?

France .... but the sick and twisted upper class in the Has-Been Kingdom .... would revel in that
being the inbred delusional freaks that they are ....
Americans ? they are always transactional .... never had any market share there anyway ...
they don't give a flying f..k

Oreshkin predicted the “fading into history” of Mercedes and BMW, by Vera Basilaya for VZGLYAD. 12.26.2023.

Oreshkin said that he does not exclude the possibility of Mercedes and BMW becoming history.
Global automobile companies, such as the German Mercedes and BMW, may become history in ten years, said Russian Presidential Aide Maxim Oreshkin.

Oreshkin, in an interview with the Expert publication , noted that today China has become the number one exporter of cars in the world, and therefore in ten years Mercedes and BMW may become history, RT reports .

He added that as brands they would probably remain, but would follow the same fate as Volvo, which was sold to China.

According to him, European manufacturers have lost the market and do not have the advantage in technology that they had five to ten years ago.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin, answering a question about the “expansion” of Chinese cars into Russia, noted their cost and quality. According to him, prices for Russian cars will decline as production increases.

https://vz.ru/news/2023/12/26/1246103.html

It's the same shitty Chinese electronics in all cars anyway

it seems they have a plan
the drive train from Haval a V6 that will be produced at the new Haval engine factory in Russia

it does make sense for Haval - they don't do cars .... just SUVs etc
get to have a bite of a market that is new for them ...
and extra volume helps payback capital costs of tooling up the engine in Russia faster - win/win

Aurus will begin production of a new line of business class cars, which will be more affordable compared to the first models of the Russian brand, said the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation Denis Manturov.

comment from an "industry insider"

Aurus cars are planned to be equipped with the Chinese E30Z engine from Great
Wall Motor. The E30Z is a 3-liter gasoline six-cylinder V-turbo engine with 299 hp
and 500 Nm of torque.
Such an engine is installed on the Chinese SUV Tank 500, which is officially sold in
Russia. Paired with the GW V6 E30Z engine is a Chinese 9-speed hydromechanical
automatic, which is likely to migrate to Aurus cars for the mass consumer along with
the engine

At the moment, Aurus cars are equipped with an original domestically developed
NAMI-4123 engine. This is a 4.4-liter V8 gasoline biturbo engine with 598 hp and 880
Nm of torque, which is installed in Senat sedans and Komendant SUVs with a 38 hp
electric motor and a 9-speed automatic transmission KATE-R932.

The problem is that the NAMI-4123 V8 motor and the KATE-R932 gearbox are produced
individually, so they have a cosmic cost. One of the ways to reduce the cost of Aurus
cars is to use Chinese units.

GW V6 E30Z engines for Aurus cars will be produced in Russia. Production will be
established at the new Haval engine plant in the Tula region, which should start
operating in early 2024

seems to make perfect sense to me ....

The great thing is that the west have handed them a chance to get up to speed during a period where Russian consumers can't get European cars easily... it is a good time to get into the market and build up production and reduce costs and gain a market share while European car companies can only look on at the businesses they built up in Russia with the intention of making really good money, not just on the Russian market but cheap production in factories that have cheap energy and a skilled workforce means they could produce for other markets including their own and make more profit.... but now they are selling those factories they built for 10c on the dollar because their own governments have investments in the Ukraine they don't want to lose.

a no-brainer you can claw back your capital investment faster in tooling up for mass production for stretched chassis and bodywork panels.
which also reduces your capital investment needs on future models on the longer chassis - eg planned SUV on the non-French Rus platform
staging your capital investments is always nice re profitability

( longer wheelbase is more suitable for electrification too .... re batteries - so you are opening up other opportunities - an electric taxi with a big rear seat area makes a lot of sense for big cities)

there are some smart and pragmatic people running Lada now ... reversing most of the French sabotage

AvtoVAZ plans to produce an elongated sedan LADA Aura in a special configuration for taxis. This was reported to the portal "Lada.Online" in the press service of the enterprise, but the equipment of such machines was not disclosed. It is assumed that they can be used as taxis in the comfort class and above. Recall that the new elongated sedan LADA Aura was created on the basis of the Vesta model.

So, the passengers of the rear row received an additional 25 cm of free space. Production of the novelty is scheduled to begin at the plant in Togliatti in September 2024. As Maxim Sokolov, President of AvtoVAZ, said earlier, the cost of the new LADA Aura car will be significantly higher than 2 million rubles, since this is a premium class car. Earlier, the public was presented with prototypes of LADA Aura in maximum equipment, which are intended mainly for officials. Under the hood of such cars is a 1.8-liter engine with a capacity of 122 hp, which works in combination with a Chinese CVT. The interior is made in light and dark colors, the seat and steering wheel are upholstered in genuine leather, a 10-inch multimedia system with Yandex.Auto services and a digital instrument cluster are installed on the dashboard.

volumes make no sense ... that factory could do 100,000 pa
Gazprom HQ is in St.Pberg ... I get that bit

maybe the real idea is that Almaz-Antey electric E-Neva SUV ..... penciled in for that factory
why build it on a new chassis ?
when NAMI has already made a totally modular chassis for the Aurus project ...
( and lets face it they won't recoup that investment for about 100 years at current build rates )

why not merge the projects ... I would
let Almaz-Antey concentrate on building S-400s

meanwhile build cheaper shorter wheelbase Aurus models there with a mass-produced V6 .... has a bit of merit
apparently to be supplied by Haval from its new Rus engine factory

"Cars of the premium brand Aurus can be assembled at the production facilities of the former Toyota plant in Shushary. Gazprom is interested in the project, which intends to buy out a stake of up to 40%, sources said. Earlier, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, Denis Manturov, on the sidelines of the international exhibition and forum "Russia", already mentioned the joint work of the department and Gazprom on the development of the Aurus brand "in different directions".

At present, the controlling stake in Aurus is owned by FSUE NAMI (63.5%), more than a third is owned by the Arab Tawazun Fund (36%), and Sollers also has a small share (0.5%).

Serial assembly of Aurus has been underway since 2021 in Yelabuga. The plant produces the Aurus Senat limousine and the Komendant SUV. Earlier there were plans to launch an armored off-road Komendant limousine in 2024. It is presumably to be presented by the RIDA company from Nizhny Novgorod.

In 2023, Aurus increased sales by selling 115 units. Against this background, the company's management thought about increasing production and expanding the model range. Russian President Vladimir Putin also spoke about this. According to him, in addition to limousines, sedans, Aurus will have jeeps and buses - the line will expand.

Andrey Pankov, General Director of Aurus LLC (since December 2022), headed the legal entity Shushary Auto (owner of the former Toyota plant in St. Petersburg) and the Severnaya Zvezda plant. Aurus has already posted vacancies for production personnel in the Northern capital. So far, there are no official comments on the production of the brand's cars in St. Petersburg.

Earlier, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Denis Manturov, said that Aurus would expand the model range. The new cars will be more affordable.

What is hidden behind the new AvtoVAZ model Xcite, by Olga Samofalova for VZGLYAD. 01.31.2024.

Who helps AvtoVAZ expand its model line.

At the former Nissan plant, which is now managed by AvtoVAZ, production of cars under the new Xcite brand began. Sales will start this spring. Where did AvtoVAZ suddenly get a new model from? And what will it be like?

At the subsidiary plant of AvtoVAZ, the former St. Petersburg Nissan plant, production of cars under the new Xcite brand began. They have even produced the first batch of several thousand cars. Sales will begin in the spring of 2024, but in the meantime, stock is being accumulated. AvtoVAZ, with a certain international partner, plans to launch several models at this plant, which was empty after the Japanese left.

There is little official information about this project yet. They promise to tell it only at the end of February, probably before the start of official sales. According to unofficial information, converted Chinese Chery cars will be produced under the new Xcite brand. And the Chery Tiggo 7 Pro crossover may be the first to roll off the assembly line in St. Petersburg.

In 2023, this car took fifth place among the best-selling passenger cars in Russia. This model is often found in car sharing and taxis. Its price (with a 1.5 liter engine) in Russia starts at 2.570 million rubles. It is not yet known how much a car under the Xcite brand will cost.

Why does AvtoVAZ need such cooperation with a Chinese concern and why would a Chinese give its model for production under a new brand at a Russian plant? This story is, in fact, beneficial for both sides, and for the empty Nissan plant too.

“AvtoVAZ has always had an unacceptably short model line.

If a Russian plant wants to claim the role of a serious national manufacturer, then it needs to expand its model range. We don’t have our own resources for this, so we bring in a machine that can be made under a license. This is normal practice. In the end, AvtoVAZ itself started with this, because Zhiguli is a Fiat license.

There's nothing wrong with that."– says Igor Morzharetto, partner of the analytical agency Autostat. You may recall that AZLK also began producing the redesigned JAC S3 as Moskvich-3.

“After the French left, AvtoVAZ lost a lot in its ability to adapt, and even more so, to develop new brands. In such a situation, assembling a Chinese car is a reasonable solution to restore market position in the crossover segment of the average price segment by modern standards,” says Sergei Grishunin, managing director of the NRA rating service.

“The plant near St. Petersburg has been idle for a year, but there is a modern line and experienced personnel who at one time assembled quite good X-Trails. The opportunity to relaunch it, and even with an analogue brand of the former production, is a strategically very correct decision. In addition, the main line of AvtoVAZ has lost modern systems (automatic transmission, robot, security systems), while Chery has all this almost as good as Western brands. Also, joint production means savings on recycling fees, which means an opportunity to sell the car cheaper than the Chinese original,” points out Grishunin.

In his opinion, it is unlikely that we are talking about creating AvtoVAZ’s own platform; rather, it will be a large-scale assembly with a larger share of domestic components. “The Chinese will have the opportunity to import more vehicle kits, as well as popularity in the Russian market, where there is still prejudice against the Chinese automobile industry. Only the number of cars sold will help break it,” says Grishunin.

“Screwdriver assembly from machine kits reduces the requirements for technological capacity and qualifications of workers, and due to the peculiarities of customs legislation, bringing a car in parts and assembling it in the country is cheaper than importing a finished product right away,” points out Artem Deev, head of the analytical department of AMarkets.

A reasonable question arises: how will the real Chery Tiggo 7 Pro crossover and its new version under the Xcite brand exist in the same market? Won't they interfere with each other?

“The existence of clone brands is not a problem in the market. The example of Moskvich and JAC is proof of this. Russian assembly has always been considered less reliable than Chinese, so differentiating customers on this basis will make it possible to distribute sales into different niches,” says Grishunin. According to him, Chery Tiggo 7 will occupy the niche of affordable SUVs from Nissan, Mitsubishi, Kia and Huindai. “With a price tag of around 2.6 million rubles, they will sell up to 50 thousand a year. Savings on domestic assembly can reduce the price to 2.2 million rubles, then the demand potential is much higher - up to 70-80 thousand units per year,” the expert calculated.

Artem Deev suggests that cars in cheap trim levels and with reduced technical functionality will be produced under the Xcite brand, while the full “adult” version will remain the prerogative of purely Chinese cars. “This practice has long been rooted in the global automobile industry. The same VW Polo and Skoda Rapid are actually the same car with minimal differences in the design of the exterior and interior. However, they are positioned in different segments and do not interfere with each other’s sales. The same will happen in the case of Chery Xcite,” the expert believes.

Morzharetto does not exclude that there could be agreements that if a Chinese model begins to be produced under the Xcite brand, then its analogue under the Chinese brand will be removed from the Russian market.

“Perhaps Chery is ready to bring to market a new model under its own brand, but they decided to launch a good popular model, but of the previous generation, into production under license under a different brand,”– the interlocutor explains.

This is not Chery's first attempt to conquer the Russian market. Chery is one of the first Chinese car brands to come to Russia back in the early 2000s. However, his first entry and assembly of cars at Avtotor in 2006 was not a great success, so production was curtailed two years later.

“Chery’s first entry into Russia was unsuccessful, because the Chinese were just getting their teeth into copying other people’s solutions, the technology was still in its infancy, and the build quality left much to be desired. Now the automotive industry from the Middle Kingdom is quite competitive,” notes Deev.

“In 2006, Chery was much inferior in quality to Europeans, and the cars sold frankly poorly, so the Chinese, not seeing the market potential, left it. Today, when the market is empty, prices are sky-high, and the Chinese auto industry is already on par in reliability with the Koreans ten years ago, the prospect of assembling Chinese cars in Russia is quite bright,” says Grishunin. In his opinion, if cooperation with AvtoVAZ is successful, Chery and Exeed may have their own sites in Russia. “Most likely, the Chinese strategy includes plans for cooperation, their own factories, and the import of Chinese exclusives,” Grishunin does not rule out.

https://vz.ru/economy/2024/1/31/1251085.html