Russia targets 80% domestic car share by 2035, but Chinese brands already take 54.6%

Russia has approved a new automotive development strategy targeting 2.8 million vehicles of annual output by 2035, with domestic cars reaching an 80% share of the new-car market, a goal Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin unveiled on August 31 as part of a push to secure the country's technological sovereignty.

The gap between that ambition and today's market is stark, since Western automakers pulled out en masse after sanctions and the industry has only recently recovered, with 2025 output reaching 830,000 vehicles, nearly double the level right after sanctions hit in 2022, while Chinese brands have surged to 54.6% of the Russian market and domestic marques hold just 30%.

Russia has poured about 100 billion rubles (roughly $1.2 billion) into reviving idle plants and restarting factories abandoned by foreign automakers, restoring production across most segments and lifting annual capacity above 3 million vehicles, but its homegrown brands still lag on technology and product strength.

Technological sovereignty is the hardest part, since Russia wants 80% technology independence for passenger cars by 2030, yet its current localization path leans on Chinese engineering, with the Volga K50 that President Vladimir Putin test-drove recently being a local adaptation of the Geely Xingyue L assembled at a former Volkswagen plant that Russia reclaimed after the German brand exited in 2022.

Pulling the domestic share from 30% to 80% within a decade while also weaning itself off Chinese cars looks ambitious when sanctions are still in place and its own brands are thin on technology, so the more realistic near-term picture is that Russia's domestically built cars will keep a lot of Chinese technology under the hood.