State of Union Automotive Industry in the 2000s
At the Dawn of new Millennium Russian, later Union Automotive industry was booming. Following the Collapse of USSR and subsequent reforms production increased from 1.8 mil in RSFSR to little over 2 mil by the end of the 1990s.
This trend would continue well into first decade of 2000s, main driver being the fact that Macroeconomic trends were strong and growing incomes of the population led to a surging demand, other reason being Russian metal companies, having achieved significant profits on foreign markets, sought to invest in Russia's automotive sector, same going for other commodity oriented companies. By the 2000s the Union car market was booming, with domestic manufacturers keeping lion share of the the domestic market of 77% while other 23% were forgein manufacturers, on second hand by the end of the decade forgein branded cars managed to capture 50% of Unions domestic market with domestic brands holding other 50% . Similar percentages were reflected in EEU, CIS economic space with Russian brands remaining competitive with outside competitors within EEU and CIS economic space, increased demand being driven by steady rise in living standards across member state's. Besides Domestic market, EEU/CIS market EU also appeared as a significant market for Union products. Main driver behind home manufacturing were cheap energy prices together with supportive government policies like establishment of SEZ over the territory of the Union.
Its important to note that not all production was done in Union State itself, in fact due to Ukraines membership in EEU and CIS economic space which resulted with less restrictions placed within said the economic space opposed to restrictions placed for outside states, paired with already existing manufacturing capacities from Soviet period of 200k units of all types, cheaper labor and good knowledge of Russian language significant number of companies belonging to Union Automotive industry decided to output some of their production to Ukraine so that by the end of the decade some 281,668 units were produced in Ukraine from which 78,455 were exported to Union State. In fact Russian brands accounted for around 2/3rds of the units produced in Ukraine.
Back to the Union states and some significant companies there. Major companies in the Union State are big three car makers which are AvtoVAZ (Lada), AZLK (Moskvitch) and GAZ (Volga) which make a bulk of Automotive industry within Union state, EEU/CIS and are main exporters of said industry.
These are some of the following new brands that were launched by above mentioned companies.
Lada Kalina launched in 2000
Lada Priora
Volga Siber
Then following governments push for electric cars and subsequent financial help we also saw a push to produce electric cars like LADA Ellada
Which is seeing growing popularity in Union Market.
Besides Union big three we also have Ural Automotor Factory , or in short UAMZ. In May 2004, UAMZ and India's Tata Motors entered into a contract to build TATA trucks at the factory. Together, they co-produced two models of Tata 407 and Tata LPT 613 branded as UAMZ-4346. The partners went on ti signa 3-year contract, with the release of up to 5,000 trucks per year. In 2007, UMAZ drafted plans to establishing a joint production with China's Geely Automobile, to produce models of Geely CK and the Chinese company Great Wall Motors for the production of SUVs ZXAuto Landmark; production trials began in May 2007.
By the end of the decade Union State has almost doubled its production and went from producing 2,055,600 units at the end of the 90s to producing 4,023,837 units of all kinds in 2010 rising from 10th place at the beginning of the millennium to 6th place being behind China, USA, Japan, Germany and S.Korea respectively.
So
@panpiotr here's coming overview of automotive industry for coming 10 years that takes into the account economic boom that will happen. It should be okay short of us messing things massively (if that happens ill edit the update). I also added a little bit on Ukraine and as we can see they are doing fine for themselves managing to double their capacities from Soviet times to 420k with our brands holding 2/3rd of the production.
