Hundreds of thousands of cars will not reach the Russian consumer, the Japanese publication Autocar Japan does not hide its doubts about this (inosmi.ru retelling). The journalist only hopes that the Ukrainian conflict will be resolved quickly and the Japanese car industry will return to Russia.
Japanese manufacturers joined the sanctions against Russia and stopped shipping new cars and spare parts to Russia. As soon as the machines and spare parts in the warehouses run out, sales stop – there are no new deliveries. Production in Russia has also been suspended.
New cars in Russia were assembled by four companies – Nissan, Toyota, Mitsubishi and Mazda.
So, the Nissan Terrano was produced at the Renault Moscow plant; at the PCMA Rus plant in Kaluga – Mitsubishi Outlander and Pajero Sport; at the Toyota plant in St. Petersburg – Camry and RAV4; at the Nissan plant in St. Petersburg – X-Trail, Murano and Qashqai, and at the Sollers Auto plant in Vladivostok – Mazda CX-5, CX-9, CX-30.
In addition, according to the Japanese consultancy FOURIN Inc. by 2021, approximately 110,000 Japanese-made cars and trucks will be imported from Japan.
As for used cars, exports were suspended for a few weeks in March but resumed later, and now used cars worth up to 6 million yen ($50,000) are allowed to be exported from Japan to Russia.
At present, the automotive business between Japan and Russia is thus limited to the export of used cars.