My understanding is that western auto manufacturers handed over their stake in joint ventures for peanuts before exiting. It could cause short term price disruptions but in the long term will lead to cheaper cars as Renault, Volkswagen will no longer require a cut.
Hah. The Mercedes and Volkswagen factories in Russia basically just did final assembly. Things like engines, well most components, were all imported. So if you are interested in having an empty building with an assembly line for final assembly and little else, plus a lot of willing workers, you can have it. Did you expect something like that to be bought for much? The whole place is a huge liability. The state will probably have to pay unemployment benefits for these people for months. Just not right now because they have their severance package. Russia is not like those "at will" states in the US. At least not since the wild 1990s.
The Renault plant, or should I say Lada plant at Togliatti, it is different. But still pretty hairy. Renault was switching Lada from using a Russian designed car platform, to their own common platform. So guess what, lots of imported electronics (even things like windshield wiper sensors), airbags, transmissions, etc. Sure the chassis, paint, and engine is Russian. But little else. The transmission was supposedly assembled in Russia but used imported parts. Even the steering wheel was imported. So, Lada basically switched production to the car they were producing before acquisition by Renault, should be rolling off the assembly lines next month. The Renault plant at Moscow was just another assembly line for imported Renault group crap.
The only car factories which had no shutdowns were the Chinese ones. Great Wall i.e. Haval and Chery. The South Korean car factories had a short stoppage, but then decided to continue. Hyundai group already had decent enough production cycle where engine assembly was done in Russia. Great Wall is also expected to start assembling engines in Russia this year.
The Russian state gave car manufacturers tax benefits on a sliding scale the more Russian content the factories put in the cars. But a lot of them were not using that much native content yet. And modern vehicle electronics in general are a bugbear basically.
In the long run Lada will either find new partners or make their own vehicle platform. But making a new vehicle platform takes quite some time. Years. They got the guys who made the Aurus car, NAMI, working on it. But I think at least some of the other plants will be closed and some might be sold to other car manufacturers. Who knows, maybe Indian or Chinese ones. A lot of people in the government are getting kind of chaffed at foreign car manufacturers in general though.
Again, this sounds like a short term problem. If there is demand for Chinese products, shipping volume will be increased.
Well there is a lot of spare capacity in rail transport from East to West. Most rail transport is West to East because Russia basically exports a lot of bulky things like coal, iron ore, copper ore, steel, nickel, etc to China. While China mostly sends higher value finished goods. So there are a lot of empty hopper trains on the way back.
European shipping companies weren't operating as a charity before the war, they shipped to Russia for commercial reasons. Cutting yourself off from one of Europe's biggest markets for political reasons is suicidal.
Well yeah. But this is war. It isn't supposed to make sense. At least they made it so.
The aviation sector and the gas turbine power plants. It is also going to be a mess. Too many imported aircraft and it's not like Russia is a small place. It has huge expanses and you cannot just travel by rail at 90kph. Well you can but it isn't efficient. I am sure they will be able to keep the planes working, way better than what the pundits have been claiming, but they will eventually have to cannibalize aircraft.
I expect car production at Lada, which is the largest builder in Russia, to resume on all lines until the end of the year. They might also start increasing car imports and sales of used cars are rising. I am sure the auto parts for repairs will show up somehow through the gray market. Already import channels are being created and there is no reported large lack of parts for car repairs yet. For airplane parts it will be more difficult, but the government is putting into place a plan to refurbish parts and the like, if it comes to it the industry can duplicate some of the parts but this isn't being considered yet. The government wants to switch to native aircraft. The government has paid to refurbish several mothballed Tu-214 and An-124 aircraft. Also back ordered production of Tu-214 for a couple years. Then they will likely increase native content in the Superjet to 100% or as close as possible. They claim this will take a year. I think it will take more like 2-3 years.
As for the gas turbine power plants, I think they will figure something out, since some plants are mixed coal/gas, others were upgrades of older lower efficiency boilers, and the gas turbine is just an extra stage in the cycle to boost efficiency kind of like a turbo. But for other power plants it will be a mess and energy efficiency of gas turbine power plants will likely go way down. But then again, the Europeans say they don't want Russian gas, so even if Russia has to burn more gas, it shouldn't be an insoluble issue. I am pretty sure Putin won't be sending any gas to Europe that they need in Russia.
Russia bought a lot of F-class gas turbines from Siemens and GE. Some smaller ones and some larger ones for power generation. And even bigger gas turbines. Siemens pulled out of Russia, and as you know from the Nord Stream shenenigans they don't support their turbines in Russia anymore. So their turbines will likely turn into huge expensive pieces of junk next time they break down. Funnily enough GE had licensed the whole production cycle of the smaller F-class gas turbines to Russia and they got it up and running like two years ago in a joint venture majority owned by a Russian company which is still operating. So those should have full parts and replacements. As we see from the Nord Stream turbine affair it seems Siemens can't even repair their own gas turbines in Germany and has to send them to Canada. So retarded. Globalism at work here.
Russia has a program to make its own F-class gas turbines. It has been funding it for like, I think 5 years, so the products should show up sooner or later. And then I don't know what they will do with the Siemens gas turbines, maybe sell them for scrap to India.
