Wagonlog

Car and the City

Tag: 2025

  • Are prices in Azerbaijan’s car market declining?

    Against the background of global turmoil, the fashion for the word Tariffs and pessimistic forecasts, it is surprising to hear about falling prices on the Azerbaijani market. But experts of automobile economy have found a positive and I can’t help but share it with you.

    According to the State Customs Committee, 9,868 passenger cars were imported into the country in April 2025, of which 43% or 4,216 were equipped with hybrid engines. This is an impressive jump – 2.8 times more than the same period last year.
    Hybrid cars are entering the country at more attractive prices. In addition, the growing number of importers is creating healthy competition that is curbing price hikes in the market.
    Official statistics confirm a noticeable decrease in MRSP. If in April last year the average price of one hybrid car imported into the country was $29,272, in the same month of 2025 this figure fell by 28.7% and amounted to $20,875.
    A significant factor in the availability of hybrid cars is tax and customs benefits. Until January 1, 2026, the import and sale of hybrid cars with a production date of no more than three years and an engine displacement of no more than 2,500 cubic centimeters are fully exempt from value added tax.
    Although we should probably thank Chinese low-priced cars first of all (a decrease in the average price may also mean a shift of buyers’ interest from medium and high segments to low segments).

  • Volvo Cars cutting 3,000 jobs to reduce costs

    Sweden-based Volvo Cars is eliminating 3,000 positions as part of a cost-cutting program as the automotive industry faces challenges from trade tensions and economic uncertainty.

    The company said Monday that around 1,200 of the job reductions would come among workers in Sweden, with another 1,000 positions currently filled by consultants, mostly in Sweden, also slated for elimination.

    The rest of the job losses would be in other global markets. Most of the jobs being cut are office positions.

    “The actions announced today have been difficult decisions, but they are important steps as we build a stronger and even more resilient Volvo Cars,” said H?kan Samuelsson, Volvo Cars president and CEO.

    “The automotive industry is in the middle of a challenging period. To address this, we must improve our cash flow generation and structurally lower our costs.”

    The company, owned by China’s Geely, has 42,600 full-time employees.

    Carmakers around the world are facing several headwinds, among them higher costs for raw materials, a diminished European car market, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposition of 25% tariffs on imported cars and steel.

    Volvo Cars has its main headquarters and product development offices in Gothenburg, Sweden, and makes cars and SUVs in Belgium, South Carolina and China.

  • Subaru of America increases vehicle prices – second automaker to increase MSRPs this month (after Ford)

    Subaru of America is hiking prices on several models, the company said on Monday, the latest automaker to pass along cost increases to consumers as their expenses rise from the Trump administration’s tariffs.

    Subaru said in a statement that the increases were made in response to “current market conditions,” without citing tariffs or specific price actions.

    “The changes were made to offset increased costs while maintaining a solid value proposition for the customer. Subaru pricing is not based on the country of origin of its products,” the company said in a statement.

    Car company executives have recently shared with investors how much the levies will cost them this year, with some in Detroit saying they were expected to add up to $5 billion. While there has been some relief on duties imposed on foreign auto parts, U.S. President Donald Trump has maintained a 25% tariff on the 8 million vehicles the U.S. imports annually.

    Ford Motor earlier this month raised prices on three models produced in Mexico by as much as $2,000, becoming one of the first major automakers to respond to Trump’s tariffs.

    The Subaru price increases will add between $750 and $2,055 to vehicles depending on the model and trim, according to a notice posted on a dealer website. The price increases are expected to hit vehicles on dealer lots starting in June, according to the notice.

    Subaru imports 45% of its U.S.-sold vehicles, according to 2024 data from research firm S&P Global Mobility. Its affordable Forester model is one of a handful of lower-cost vehicles set to be most affected by tariffs. The SUV is getting a price hike of between $1,075 and $1,600 depending on the trim, the dealer notice said.

    Reuters

  • Azerbaijan Auto Market 2025

    I came across an interesting post on Reddit. Some statements there are controversial, but overall the trends are described well. I used to follow the market through the eyes of BestSellingCars, the information on which was taken from an unclear place. Someone privately provided it to Matt, having access to some inside information on dealers. It reflects only sales of new cars, which are inferior to the import of used cars (at least they used to be inferior). I also got information from fragmentary data from the State Statistics Committee.

    Then I abandoned this idea, even though I have slightly more data, coming into contact with the largest platform for ads for the sale of cars. The latest data on BestSellingCars, by the way, is also for 2022.
    It seems obvious to me that Chinese brands dominate among new cars now, the import of used cars from Korea has grown a lot. The State Customs Committee reports on figures, but not on brands and models, without even specifying where the vehicles are imported from:

    Azerbaijan imported 16,758 vehicles in January-February 2025, which is 26% more than in the same period last year. The total value of vehicles imported into the country was $288,940,130 (an increase of 16.7%). The average price of a car was $17,251
    The largest number of vehicles were passenger cars and other motor vehicles for the carriage of passengers – 15,309 thousand units (an increase of 27.3%) with a total value of almost $256 million (an increase of 17.6%). Average price of a car is $16,717
    Of passenger cars, in particular, 7,577 thousand hybrid cars were imported during the reporting period (an increase of 2.9 times) for the amount of 146 million US dollars (an increase of 1.8 times). Average price of a car is $19,303
    In addition, over 2 months, the number of imported electric cars amounted to 309 units (a decrease of 42.9%) for the amount of 12,839,900 US dollars (a decrease of 1.9 times). Average price of a car is $41,553

    Turbo.az shares information about the most popular car dealerships operating on their site, as well as official dealers. This is not about sales, but about ad views, but it is still very interesting (data for 3 months of 2025):

    Самые продаваемые автомобили в Азербайджане в 2019

  • Pre-Owned Tesla Prices Tumble as Trade-Ins Climb To All-Time High

    • In the year to March 31, the average price of a used Tesla fell 7.03% in the U.S. and 17.3% in the U.K., industry data suggests.
    • The falling prices reflect higher-than-ever trade-in rates.
    • Demand for new Teslas is also weak and could get worse if tariffs induce significant price increases.

    As a glut of traded-in vehicles hit the market, prices for pre-owned Teslas have dropped in the U.K. and U.S.

    The price drop further complicates Tesla’s business prospects as the firm faces plummeting global sales and supply chain uncertainty amid an escalating trade war.

    Used Tesla Prices Fall Faster Than Other Brands

    According to data from CarGurus, the average price for a second-hand Tesla in the U.S. fell from $31,590 on March 31, 2024, to $29,370 a year later

    The 7.03% decline is much steeper than the 2.72% average observed across brands and models.

    Cybertrucks faced the most severe price drop of more than 54% year-over-year.

    Despite Elon musk’s prediction that Tesla would sell 250,000 Cybertrucks per year, the company has sold just 46,000 since they hit the market in 2023.

    Tesla in the U.K.

    The decline was even more pronounced in the U.K., where the average price of a second-hand Tesla fell 17.3% from ?26,895 to ?22,213.

    As Tesla doesn’t sell Cybertrucks outside of North America, the model with the steepest price decline in the U.K. was the Model Y, which saw an average price reduction of 22.55%.

    Overall, pre-owned vehicle prices fell a little over 4% in the country, CarGuru data reveals.

    When it comes to new Teslas, the U.K. has bucked the wider European trend for declining sales. Yet the increase is down to an uptick in electric vehicle (EV) sales across the board.

    Looking at all EVs sold in the country, Tesla has actually lost market share.

    Tariffs To Impact New Tesla Prices


    While the cost of used Teslas has fallen, new vehicles are expected to rise in price once the full impact of recent U.S. tariffs is factored in.

    Like most automakers, Tesla relies on international supply chains that will incur significant new taxes under Donald Trump’s latest tariff regime.

    An analysis by Barron’s estimates that new import duties will cause the average cost of a Tesla made in the U.S. to rise by $4,000, or 11%.

    The looming price hike comes at a bad time for Tesla, which has suffered a dramatic drop in sales as more buyers boycott the company over CEO Elon Musk’s politics.

    In the first quarter of 2025, Tesla sold just 336,681 units, its worst performance since 2023 and nearly 80,000 fewer EV than rival BYD

    Between the growing boycott movement and weaker demand for EVs generally, the firm has lost market share in almost every market.

    Source: https://www.ccn.com/news/business/pre-owned-tesla-prices-tumble/

  • Guilty pleasure and Turbo

    Among my strange hobbies, there is one brought from my childhood that haunts me obsessively. I can’t even call it purely nostalgic. As the mass of nostalgic affairs after some memories dissipate – an indulgent smile, a slight sadness, some associative rows. But with Turbo it is somehow different for me.

    But first I have to tell very young readers what Turbo is. If your first association with this word is with Turkish chewing gum and pictures with cars, you can skip this paragraph. So, in 80’s – 90’s, Turkish Kent company produced different chewing gums along with other food products and it coincided in some strange way with the shortage and the resulting greedy-guts behavior in the socialist camp countries. That’s why one of the series of chewing gums with automobile inserts (wrappers) got to all sorts of Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the former USSR and became not only popular, but also surpassed the popularity in the homeland. However, in Turkey too there is nostalgia for Turbo and references to this brand will definitely be found in all kinds of digests, such as “top 100 nostalgic things from childhood”. Gum was first brought by “speculators” (early form of self-employment in USSR) and semi-legally in all sorts of retail outlets (for example, I remember a table near the department store in Baku). And quite expensive. However, I will stop price disputes here at once, because it is a very controversial and debatable topic and it is not correct to compare the price of bread and milk of that time and today with imported, not always legal goods. But for sure the margins of gummies were quite high.

    Later Turbo and dozens of other chewing gums, mostly Turkish from Kent, Ulker, Bifa, Dandy, Baycan, etc., flooded into “commercial” stores, stalls, tents. Here are some names from those years that you might remember too – Lazer, Final, Bombibom, CinCin, Minti, ??psevdi (aka Love is…), OtoMoto. I, like almost everyone else, was a fan of Turbo and twice collected liners (the first collection was stolen in my school), but the years went by, adulthood, foreign cars began to drive on our roads, gum became quite cheap and cars were not so attractive anymore.

    But in adulthood I became interested in Turbo again, and thanks to the Internet not only saw all the missing pictures, including the legendary first series 1-50, which did not come to our country, but also read a lot of interesting things on the subject. Fortunately my hobby remained rather passive – I didn’t start collecting pictures again, buying rare unopened gum at auctions, etc. My nostalgia is limited to posting on my blog photoshopped cars that I find interesting, sometimes accompanied by historical comments. Some of them could never be portraited on original Turbo even if they were quite old, some were and linked to the pictures of Turkish wrappers.

    Wandering around the internet you can realize that there are a lot of people passionate about Turbo, but as I think everyone has their own references and passions for this media fetish, not like me.