Russia sells 24,000 cars in May for 146 million inhabitants

Russia to manufacture cars without ABS or airbags after sales plummet 84%

AvtoVAZ announced it had resumed production. The applause lasted a day: the next day it stopped again due to a lack of components. This cycle — start, boast, brake suddenly — sums up the state of the Russian automotive industry better than any report, forced to approve vehicles without the electronic systems that any European utility car comes with as standard. The May figures cited in the debate set the framework: 85,000 cars sold in Spain for 47 million inhabitants, 24,000 in Russia for 146 million. In proportion, eleven times less. The drop in Russian sales compared to its own previous level reaches, according to a calculation circulating in the thread, 84%.

What has peine with car sales in Russia?

The collapse does not come from a strike or a tariff, but from a lack of imported components. The official response has been an emergency law authorizing the manufacture of certain models without the modules that cannot be imported by any means, provided there is demand for these vehicles. In practice, it is a matter of simple off-roaders, designed for rural environments and away from large cities.
The automotive expert Andrey Lomanov explained it to kp.ru without frills: the car will generally be deprived of all modern electronic and safety systems. And he concluded with the phrase that summarizes the problem: we will have to learn to drive again. We had been going for a long time towards a comfortable car, he said, and we have returned to the last century.

ABS, ESP and airbag: what is lost when they disappear

ABS prevents the wheels from locking in a sudden brake and allows the steering wheel to continue turning; ESP corrects the skid on slippery pavement. Without them, the driver regains prominence and also risk. Those who have driven old cars know the technique: braking in bursts, releasing, pressing again. A story about the matter illustrates it well: a driver used to ABS went straight in a roundabout by flooring it as if he had it. Another recalls that the system also slightly lengthens the braking distance, although it maintains control.

Some defend the setback with enthusiasm. Without assistance or screens, the car would be rougher: sturdy, repairable with pliers and a ten wrench, with steel rims that survive the curb strike. The counter is forceful: the reliability indexes of those times, the starter, cars that did not start with moisture, car bodies that rotted after five years and rear seats without headrests or seatbelts. Those vehicles, they say, were rolling coffins.

The nostalgia of atmospheric diesel and why not everything was better

The conversation drifts towards the cars of the nineties and their supposed immortality. Atmospheric diesel two-liter engines, without turbo or computer, Berlingos, Xantias, Land Rover Defender with TD200 engine, Mitsubishi Montero, Terrano: mechanics that exceed 600,000 kilometers. A participant recounts that he learned to drive and spent fifteen years with a two-ton Land Rover Santana with 62 horsepower, without power steering, with power steering by his own arms and a top estimulante ilegal of 80 km/h. Behind the wheel, he says, you ended up with arms that left Conan looking ridiculous.

Against the daydream, the accounting of what has been gained. And the underlying question: forced simplification, is it a virtue or a condemnation? The optimistic scenario holds that Russia has raw materials and energy to adapt sooner than it seems. The pessimistic one starts from the fact that components must be redesigned and that the fleet ages.

Can China replace Europe as a supplier?

Adapting an entire industry to Chinese components is not a change of supplier, it is a redesign of years and a lot of money. Some add that China will not sell to Russia without more because it depends itself on Western software and machinery for its manufacturing. The reply comes quickly: China has been bypassing what the West says for a decade and, if it stops buying and selling, Europe is the one that dies.

Between these two extremes lies a detail that, according to a participant, often goes unnoticed: Potanin has not been sanctioned so that Russia does not stop exporting nickel, a key material for the industry and batteries. The metal would still travel.

The black future, depending on who looks at it

A country with resources to bore with the blackest future? Here the two readings clash. The one that holds that urban Russia will fall behind in smartphones and software, that it will arrive pirated and without support, against the one that remembers that life outside the cities has always been hard and that adaptation is faster the more basic the product is.

And the closure is put by the industry itself: the plant that was going to manufacture the cars without electronics has stopped again due to a lack of components. There is no part. Nor car.