Car dealers expect discounts on cars due to stocks in warehouses – Kommersant

Inventories of new cars in the warehouses of major auto dealers were the highest since the beginning of 2022. Representatives of the companies spoke about this “Vedomosti”. They expect that this will lead to the need to sell cars at discounts.

Representatives of Rolf, BN-Motors and Avtodom Group spoke about the occupancy rate of warehouses. “There will definitely be discounts. Even if we take December 2023, Chery, Exeed and Haval were improving trading conditions. They began to understand that there was not enough market for everyone and they had to dump somewhere,” said Nikolai Ivanov, director of the sales department for new Rolf cars. According to him, the company now has 4,520 vehicles in stock versus 4,266 and 4,339 on average for 2022 and 2023. At the same time, Rolf does not record any records for the stocks of cars that are imported by the company through parallel imports.

Chairman of the Board of Directors of BN-Motors Alexey Podshchekoldin reported “overload on Lada Vesta” at the level of monthly sales volume. According to him, inventories for Chinese brands reach two or more months of sales, which is “considered excessive.” At the same time, Mr. Podshchekoldin notes a decrease in purchasing activity since October 2023 due to an increase in the key rate and the appearance on the market of cars imported after the indexation of the recycling fee in August 2023.

As follows from a Kommersant survey, at the beginning of the year, demand in the car market remained, and by the end of January, dealers expect an increase in sales by 30–77% year on year. Some talk about an increase in traffic in salons during the holidays, despite the frost. At the same time, there is no traditional driver of demand in the form of a threat of price increases in the first days of the month – Chinese brands have refrained from this policy for the second year. But experts expect that prices will continue to rise in the future and, overall, cars will rise in price by 15–40% over the year.

Read more about expert opinions in the Kommersant article. “Cars are in the midst of being dismantled”.

Leonid Uvarchev