OREANDA-NEWS  By the end of January 2025, the total volume of new car imports to Russia decreased by more than two times compared to the same period in 2024 and amounted to 31.9 thousand units. This is reported by the newspaper Izvestia, citing data from Autostat.

For comparison, in January 2024, a total of 64.3 thousand new cars were delivered in the country. Thus, in 12 months the indicator decreased by 32.4 thousand. On a monthly basis, imports fell even more — by 36.1 thousand. As a result, shipments in early 2025 dropped to the level recorded in January 2023, when the Russian car market was just beginning to recover from the failure in 2022 amid the departure of Western brands.

Experts attributed the sharp drop in import volumes primarily to an increase in the recycling fee. Before the next increase in customs tariffs, supplies were carried out in larger quantities than the market needed at that time. As a result, there is currently an oversupply of cars stored in dealer warehouses in Russia. "Now it makes no sense to import cars when there are large drains," concluded Sergey Udalov, Executive Director of Autostat.

At the end of January, the RBC publication, citing a source, reported record overstocking on the Russian car market. At the beginning of 2025, according to the interlocutor, a total of 700 thousand new cars accumulated in dealer warehouses. Such dynamics have not been observed in the domestic market for a long time. Andrey Terlyukevich, head of Avtospeccenter Group of Companies, said that the available volumes would be enough for four to five months of sales.