The key facts

  • The average requested car loan amount in September fell from 1.5 million to 750 thousand rubles year on year
  • The number of car loan applications grew by 120%; the leaders were Sverdlovsk (+167%), Krasnodar Krai (+142%) and Chelyabinsk (+131%) Oblasts
  • Interest in cars under 1 million rubles grew by 63%, while interest in models over 3 million fell by 14%; every third query to the AI assistant concerned the recycling fee

More applications, smaller amounts

The average requested car loan amount on the financial marketplace Sravni halved in September — from 1.5 million to 750 thousand rubles compared with last year. At the same time, the number of users submitting applications grew by 120%. These figures come from a joint study by Sravni and Zen, which Gazeta.Ru has reviewed.

A shift toward affordable cars

The study's authors compared loan applications with users' interest in automotive publications — and reading shows the same shift toward cheaper cars. Interest in collections of cars priced under 1 million rubles grew by 63%, while users engaged 14% less with materials about models costing more than 3 million rubles. In September, requests to Zen's news AI assistant Glif for explanations of automotive news rose 85% compared with August, and every third request concerned the recycling fee. Users most often asked about news related to the Atom, Haval Jolion and Lada Vesta; the top five also included the Hyundai Solaris and Tenet T7, while Chinese brands accounted for 46% of automotive queries.

Regional picture

The number of car loan applications grew the most in Sverdlovsk Oblast — by 167%. It is followed by Krasnodar Krai with a 142% increase and Chelyabinsk Oblast at 131%; Samara and Rostov Oblasts also made the top five. In terms of growth in reading car-buying recommendations on Zen, the leaders are Krasnodar Krai, Tatarstan, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod and Sverdlovsk Oblasts. The study itself records a simultaneous rise in demand for loans and a decline in their average size, but the authors of the publication do not name the reasons for this dynamic.