The Auto Expo 2023 got off to a grand start yesterday in Noida near Delhi. After 3 years after Corona, auto expo festival started. It is the biggest auto show.
Cars from home and abroad will also be on display. Expensive cars and new model cars will also be displayed. As the exhibition is being held after 3 years, there is a lot of anticipation among the automobile enthusiasts.
Car makers say that today’s youth wants the best and at the same time the prices of cars have increased compared to the past. Shailesh Chandra, Managing Director, Passenger Vehicles Division, Tata Motors, said, “If you look at what happened in the last 10 years, 10 years ago, the average price of a car was Rs 3.5-4 lakh. It increased to Rs.6-6.5 lakhs in the next five years and today it is Rs.9-9.5 lakhs. Today 60-65 percent of customers are below 35 years of age. They are optimistic about their future. They don’t want to compromise themselves.”
Also, they look at whether the choice is the best, not the price. So, if the gravitation is towards you then you have to go with the trend market and that’s what I’m doing.
Apart from market leader Maruti Suzuki, with continued enthusiasm in the entry-level car segment, all major players clearly marked their move up the value chain during the segmentation between entry-level cars with lower sticker prices. Premium-level segments have expanded sharply, confirming a sharp divide in the post-Covid recovery process. A senior Maruti Suzuki executive said sales in the rural segment were sluggish.
Tomohiro Suzuki, chairman of Suzuki Motor Corporation – the majority shareholder of Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, the country’s largest car maker – says India’s green energy transition cannot be limited to battery electric vehicles and will require different options like CNG and hydrogen.
Hyundai Motor India Managing Director Ansoo Kim said the company has all the future technologies like fuel cell, lithium-ion EV and flex fuel and it will deploy them along with government policy and consumer demand trends.
Regarding the price list, data from the country’s top three passenger vehicle manufacturers Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai Motors and Tata Motors – accounting for more than 70 per cent of all car sales in fiscal 2021 – has led to a decisive shift in pricing. For Maruti Suzuki, cars priced Rs 10 lakh and above (premium segment) as a percentage of its total models portfolio grew to 14 per cent in the current fiscal from just 2.5 per cent in fiscal 2020.
For Hyundai Motor, it was 20 percent to 40 percent; and Tata Motors rose from 20 percent to 28 percent.
The first half of this fiscal shows that sales growth is led by sports utility vehicles (SUVs), which account for a large segment of passenger vehicles priced at Rs 10 lakh and above, according to the Industry Lobby Group of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM). Sales of premium cars are expected to help car companies to record numbers this fiscal. Automobile companies last posted higher profits in 2018-19, it said.
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