At the same time, 58% of respondents have changed their opinion about the Chinese car industry.
64% of Russian citizens recognized Chinese cars as a worthy alternative to Western foreign cars that have left the country. These data were obtained as a result of a survey conducted by Otkritie Avto analysts and published on the Lenta.ru portal.
At the same time, 59 percent of respondents said that the quality of Chinese cars has started to improve recently, while 58 percent of respondents said that they were able to overcome the bias against such cars. And 85 percent of those surveyed predict an increase in sales of Chinese cars by the end of the year and believe that by December, they could take the lead in sales ahead of Russian cars.
Nevertheless, a third of survey participants believe that the quality of Chinese cars is inferior to those previously on the Russian market. These opinions are more widespread among the older generation, in the age category over 56. In the Far East, 44 percent of respondents share this view, and in the Urals - 31 percent of respondents.
In July, Bloomberg reported that Russia became the main importer of cars from China from January to May 2023. During this period, 287 thousand new cars from China were imported into the country, which was more than for the whole of last year (162 thousand cars). Russia outpaced its closest competitors in terms of import volumes by almost two times: in the first five months, Mexico imported 159 thousand Chinese cars, and Belgium - 120 thousand.