Vladimir Putin is offending the world today by sticking his nose into Ukraine’s internal affairs. Reason enough for us to take a look around the automotive industry in Russia. Anyone who only thinks of what broke Lada’s is mistaken: Russia is a serious player on the world market. And did you know that cars are also built in Ukraine, albeit in modest numbers?
The Russian automotive industry accounted for 1,260,517 passenger cars in 2020, which is 2.1 percent of world production and 8.8 percent of European production. The largest producer is AvtoVAZ from Tolyatti, which we know from the Lada Kalina, Samara and Priora, among others. The second place is for Avtotor, an assembly line in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, where various Kias, BMWs, Hyundais and Chevrolets (and previously also Opels) are assembled for the domestic market. In Moscow we find number three: Avtoframos (photo 1), the Russian adventure of Renault, where the Dacia models (but under the Renault brand name) for the Russian market roll off the production line. Volkswagen is the fourth largest car manufacturer in Russia in Kaluga, south-west of Moscow. The Volkswagen Polo and Tiguan and the Skoda Rapid see the light of day there and the 1.4 TSI and 1.6 MPI engines are also made there. Ford Sollers is the number five in Russia with plants in Naberezhnye Chelny (ECoSport, photo 2) and Elabuga (Transit, Kuga, Explorer, S-Max and Galaxy) in Tatarstan in the south and Saint Petersburg (Focus and Mondeo) in the west .
And then Ukraine. Skoda has been building cars for almost twenty years at the Eurocar factory in Solomonovo, in the far west of Ukraine, at the border triangle with Slovakia and Hungary. Today, it said in small numbers, the entire Skoda range is assembled there, according to Eurocar. In the south-east of Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhya, we find ZAZ, once Ukraine’s largest car factory, where in the past all kinds of models from Kia, GM and Mercedes-Benz with dubious reputation were assembled. Today, Lada Samaras and some small trucks roll off the production line here in very modest numbers. According to the Ukrainian Association of Automobile Manufacturers UkrAutoprom, only a few hundred cars a month leave the country’s factories.
ZAZ Ukraine
It remains to be seen what will be left of those modest Ukrainian factories. But it seems inevitable that the Russian car industry will also suffer heavily from the announced sanctions.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl