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| Hyundai Motor's plant in St. Petersburg, Russia / Courtesy of Hyundai Motor |
By Ko Dong-hwan
Hyundai Motor saw its sales plunge to an all-time low in Russia last month, according to the Association of European Business (AEB), Sunday.
The association said Hyundai Motor sold only six vehicles in August, which accounts for 0.01 percent of the Russian market share, down 99.9 percent from 2,982 cars a year earlier.
"I'm not quite sure if the company managed to sell even six," an automobile industry official said. "It is virtually kicking the dirt there."
The carmaker sold 1,605 cars in Russia during the first eight months this year, a 96.5 percent-drop from the same period last year. The largely botched business this year allowed the company just 0.4 percent of the Russian market share.
Hyundai's lackluster performance is as dramatic as its former prominence in the market before the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in February last year. With its factory in St. Petersburg ― the only one in Russia ― pipelining 220,000 vehicles each year, including popular models like Solaris and Creta, its market share in the country used to be top over all.
But the invasion upended business for Hyundai's Russian office. While rival foreign brands there vacated the country, Hyundai remained and kept producing cars until July 2022. At the end of that year, the company had sold 45,000 cars. Since 2012, the company sold over 200,000 cars annually.
Hyundai's Russian factory finally gave up and ceased manufacturing operations this year.
"Sales in Russia have discontinued for over a year since the Russian invasion because the St. Petersburg factory stopped operating," the official said. "And there was almost no one the company could sell its cars to."
Observers said the plant saw its business losses snowball to almost 500 billion won ($374 million) since the invasion. In its shoes, Russian brand LADA and Chinese brands GWM claimed greater market shares.
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