The BNM Automobile Plant in Bryansk, which was supposed to start serial production of copies of Chinese vans under the BNM Model 1 brand, has stopped production. This was announced by the owner of the enterprise Alexey Podshchekoldin, who also heads the Russian Association of Auto Dealers (RoAD) and the board of directors of the BN-Motors dealer holding company, to Vedomosti.
As of March 2025, the company has assembled 110 cars, not all of which have found buyers, Podshchekoldin said. The profitability of the project turned out to be below 20%, and with current interest rates on loans, which reach almost 30%, it is impossible to work at a profit. “The market is dead now,” he described the situation.
In March this year, BNM announced the launch of two models of vans. Model 1 is an exact copy of the Chinese light commercial vehicle (LCV) FAW T80 with a payload of up to 900 kg. The second model is also Chinese: the BAW T7 with a payload of 1,500 kg. The initial plan was to assemble about 100 vehicles per month, Podshtekoldin says.
According to Avtostat, sales of new light commercial vehicles (LCVs) in Russia fell by 17.8% year-on-year in the first seven months of 2025. This decline has been going on for six months in a row, analysts note.
At the end of July, it became known that the assembly line at the Pavlovsk Bus Plant (PAZ) had been stopped. According to Russian media, the reason for this step was the decline in demand for buses. The company officially announced that it was putting its nearly 2,600 workers on a one-week annual leave.
Since the beginning of the year, some of the largest Russian automobile plants – AvtoVAZ, KamAZ, LiAZ and GAZ – have switched to a four-day work week.
At the end of July, it became clear that AvtoVAZ is reducing wages by 20%. This will happen after the Togliatti plant switches to a four-day work week at the end of September.
The volume of sales of new passenger cars in Russia fell to 437.1 thousand in January-May 2025. This is 26% lower than the same indicator last year, the Ministry of Industry and Trade reported, quoted by Kommersant.
The market for new cars produced in the country fell to 277 thousand units (-10%). During the reporting period, sales of light commercial vehicles (buses) amounted to 41.7 thousand (-17%), trucks – 23.5 thousand (-52%), and buses – by 4.3 thousand (-53%).
Sales of new electric vehicles, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, fell by 62% over the same period to 3.8 thousand units.
Today, AvtoVAZ President Maxim Sokolov announced that in the period January-May, sales of Lada cars fell by 26% to 131.2 thousand units. Sokolov also predicted a drop in demand to 30 thousand units.
Sales were largely supported by the sale of discounted goods, the wave of which has not yet subsided – at least in the segment of foreign cars, confirms Sergey Tselikov, executive director of the analytical agency Avtostat. According to his calculations, for some Chinese brands, the main share of sales in May was from cars manufactured not even in 2024, but in 2023.
“It’s a pity that cars are not like wine, they do not increase in price with age,” jokes Tselikov.
Photo: BNM MODEL 1 (analogue FAW T80)
