According to the policy of import substitution adopted by Russia, by 2035 it is necessary to set up mass production in the country of those auto parts, the shortage of which is now observed.
The document prepared by the Ministry of Industry and Trade states that it is necessary to invest 2.7 trillion rubles in R&D and the organization of the production of components for the automotive industry. And it is proposed to establish the production of some household components and automotive components until 2035.
We conducted a survey on our website to understand how ordinary motorists evaluate this department’s initiative.
52% responded positively to the idea, and the majority believe that “if you set a goal, everything will work out”, and the rest – what you should try and do.
19% doubt whether our engineers and designers have sufficient competences, and 29% wondered why, if everything is so simple, why haven’t they tried it before?
Expert opinion
Maxim Kadakovyeditor-in-chief of the magazine “Behind the wheel”:
“It’s about what result we want to achieve. For example, by releasing ABS in a million units and selling it in foreign markets (we don’t need that much domestically), we can maintain the required quality and an adequate price in terms of a unit of goods. Or we produce ABS only for our own needs, but that costs the same as a cast iron bridge. And in a car, not just ABS, and all this affects the cost of the goods. Or we make bad ABS, which somehow works, but is cheaper. We’ve all been through this before.
There are developments, the same airbags were developed in our country at the end of the USSR. But the word work has always scared me. Ideas, prototypes are one thing, but mass production is another. We have to make a million pieces with the same level of quality, which we have not always been able to do in the case of the automotive industry.
Even when we cooperated with foreign companies, we came to a certain ceiling, when it became clear that the localization of automatic transmissions, airbags, ABS and ESP was losing economic efficiency, there was no point in legalizing it here, because it was cheaper there to buy a ready-made device.
Now the situation is different, but again, to produce a complex assembly, such as an automatic transmission, you need to master the technology. Not in the sense that we don’t know how to process metal or how it’s structurally arranged. But it’s one thing to know how, and another to do. It takes years, it has to be a branded product, the manufacturer has to go through a certain development path and stand out from the competition. Such companies should appear, the products of which will be purchased by car manufacturers, including foreign ones. Then it is possible to say that the task is completed.
In that sense, everything was relatively good in the tire industry in our country. Tires from our factories, even those not built by us, were exported. Nokian from St. Petersburg was supplied to Finland, the Scandinavian countries, America, etc. Bridgestone, Michelin, Pirelli – all of them were in demand in foreign markets. Because the technologies, materials, production level and volumes were such that it was possible to maintain an acceptable price for the goods, sell a part of us and successfully export an even larger part.
Quality, volumes, technologies and competitive environment – all this together resulted in a high quality and sought after product.