“Avtotor” changed Koreans to Chinese

Kaliningrad Avtotor has returned to car production, starting with the assembly of the Chinese Kaiyi E5 sedan, and plans to produce up to 100,000 cars in 2023. The company says it’s not the last Chinese partner whose cars will take up space after the suspension of work with Kia, Hyundai and BMW. We are talking at least about BAIC and Dongfeng. Moreover, the latter is already widely represented in the Russian Federation: in addition to direct sales, the converted Dongfeng is produced by Motorinvest.

Avtotor plans to produce up to 100 thousand cars in 2023 by attracting new partners, declared January 30, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Avtotor Holding Valery Gorbunov. So far, the concern has begun assembling the Chinese Kaiyi E5 sedan. Valery Gorbunov noted that it is planned to launch production of three more models of the brand before the end of the year, negotiations with two partners are being completed.

The Kaiyi brand belongs to Chery, which has been on the Russian market for a long time and is actively developing during this crisis. The Kaliningrad Automobile Plant announced that Kai Rus LLC has become the official distributor of Kaiyi. The company is 90% owned by Avtotorg LLC and 10% by its owner, Regionfond LLC. The beneficiary is Sergey Shcherbakov (84.69%), according to SPARK-Interfax data. Sergey Shcherbakov is the son of the founder of Avtotor, Vladimir Shcherbakov. A similar ownership scheme through Avtotorg LLC, registered on December 21, 2022, belongs to two other legal entities – Baik Rus LLC and Vostok Wind Rus LLC. All of them, like Kai Rus, were registered on December 28 last year.

Vostok Wind Rus LLC may point to Dongfeng, whose name is translated from Chinese as “east wind”, and Baik Rus – to BAIC. Moreover, the converted Dongfeng in the Russian Federation is already being produced by Motorinvest in Lipetsk.

The company also became the official importer of their premium electric vehicle sub-brand Voyah. The Chinese concern also has a representative office in the Russian Federation. The assembly of a pilot batch of BAIC, including for the Russian market, on the basis of Unison in Belarus in the fall of 2022 was reported by local media. The company did not answer “Kommersant” whether the project continued. At the same time, the industry Telegram channel “Russian car” He called the BAIC models that got on the conveyor in test mode at Avtotor at the end of 2022 – these are the X3 and X35 crossovers.

Vehicle Type Approval (OTTS) for these vehicles, as well as Kaiyi E5, is not yet in the Rosstandart database. E5 according to Avtotor’s plans will go on sale in the first quarter.

Automotive expert Vladimir Bespalov notes that with the price of the E5 sedan up to 1.5 million rubles. the car will fall into a niche where there are no offers now, while there is unclaimed demand. Similarly, when the price of crossovers is below 2 million rubles, since they are mainly positioned higher: “For successful promotion, models must be cheaper than those already presented.” He notes that with a market of 0.8-0.9 million cars, Avtotor may well produce 100 thousand cars with proper logistics. At the same time, he potentially associates the choice not in favor of assembly in Belarus by BAIC with more convenient delivery of components through the port of Kaliningrad. In general, the analyst believes, by the end of the third quarter of this year, Chinese auto brands are likely to decide on the schemes for their presence in the Russian market. “For them, this is now a market where they can easily grow, with a relatively high potential capacity of 1.5 million cars,” Bespalov concludes.

Olga Nikitina