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-   -   October 2011 : Indian Car Sales & Analysis (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/110482-october-2011-indian-car-sales-analysis-6.html)

But the forum seems to be bitten by the slowdown... hehehe.

GTO amazing tread.

No Comments on FIAT. No point in discussing.
Hyundai why have their numbers gone down?? They have a successful A,B & C segment cars which have been racking in volumes, and recently launched EON. Yet they have lost market share.. Cant understand. Also EON numbers have comedown. I understand last month EON was stocked into Market prior to launch, and Oct was the month when the actual sale out has happened, but then has the response been weaker than Hyundai expected and repeat orders by Dealers are lower?? may be as all felt EON is 15K more then preserved value.
TATA Can we have the break up among the Indica and Indigo siblings?
Also see that Venture is not able to make any inroads on the omni. may be they require to ponk in the National Engine
Aria, lovely car hope to see it do better. I have a feeling TATA want customers to feel premium about the BRAND.
Safari, running on ventilators. but for how long? Hope they launch a niggle free updated Safari by Jan 2012.
M&M :- Hats of Mr. Anand. The right long term strategy. Focus on your core competences and stay ahead of competition. Bolero / Scorpio / XUV 5OO. Even the XYLO which as per M&M standards is a DUD, is doing 2.5K every month.
HONDA First Tsunami, Now Floods. They just reworked their pricing to the correct levels. I am sure, Honda is just waiting for 2011 to get over. A bad year for them across the Globe.
Toyota LIVA & EITOS doing decent, but not up to Toyota standards, may be they should have stuck to their Brand Values, of giving complete products, with sturdy build and bullet proof reliability.

Nissan Micra is the greatest looking hatchback at the moment (IMO - I know looks are subjective) and it is good to see the numbers going up for Micra. The other stunner, Jazz could have done better but for the supply issues.

Chevvy is a different company these days with Cruze cruising towards segment leadership. Toyota better watch out. Spark deserves better numbers as it is a great entry level car. Eon with its fluidic design is another cute little stunner to watch out for.

Bolero numbers are awesome. Tata Indica numbers are already good since their diesel cars offer unmatched value. If only Tata can do something to that hatchback door and rear look, Indica could rock. Looks do matter still.

Look at the combined volumes of sedans like Verna, City, Indigo, Etios, Vento, Dzire, SX4, Corolla, Cruze etc. Is sedans growing at the expense of hatchbacks?

This month was indeed tough for Maruti! I think there is no point comparing this month Maruti's sales as they are a one off. I am sure the sale of Diesel cars is going to increase further. Alto decline was bound to come. I am sure many of them must have booked Eon. Maruti somehow managing to maintain decent levels of Swift and Dzire whereas all their other models taking a huge hit. Hyundai numbers have fallen but I think they are nicely positioned in the market. They are playing all the right cards with their launches. They just need to better their after sales support.

I just wanted to know are there any new launches this year? What are the new car launches expected in near term?

I think cruze was always thought of as leader in this segment. Its the other Chevy baby, Beat, whose sales to me looks finally doing justice to its designers with third in a row 5K+ numbers.

Its quite possible actually. Look at the sedans, All the sedans are available with a Diesel and Petrol Engines, with Skodas and Cruze are only available with Diesels. On the other side there are quite a few HB which are available only with petrol engines and have no diesel siblings. count, Alto, Spark, Santro, A-Star, i10, WagonR and Estilo. Also these are Perennial best seller vehicels. Without a diesel heart, if these vehicles grow negatively or even if stay at same level, it will lead to HB segment growth getting stalled.

Considering there is a huge tilt towards diesel vehicle right now and the growing purchasing power of consumer year after year, it wont surprise me that Sedans are beating HB sales in terms of growth.

In my opinion it would be really STUPID on part of Auto Companies to keep the prices of their Diesel Vehicles at the same level now that government is thinking of putting Additional Excise duty on diesel cars. If auto companies do not increase the price of diesel cars, its the government who will increase the price by putting additional duties. worst would be if government puts all diesel cars in 22% excise duty bracket.Consumer is gone anyways.

It would be incredible for me if companies sensing this scenario, would let this price increase go to government coffers instead of coming to them. I wont be surprised if Maruti takes the lead in increasing diesel car prices and Rest Follow it. VW has already done it with their Vento when they increase prices of Diesel Vento without changing the petrol sibling's price. Figo seems doing the same. If you see diesel vs petrol siblings the gap has been increasing ever since its launch.

It is possible that the tilt towards diesel cars is helping Sedans more than the Hatchbacks. At the same time, no manufacturer can and should increase the price of Diesel cars fearing an excise hike by Government. The market forces and competition would not allow them to do that.

Having said that, it is not right on the part of Government to artificially create the price differential between petrol and diesel fuel prices. Most countries in the world sell petrol and diesel at near identical prices.

Great report. Thanks GTO!

My observations.

Eon has started off well. Got to wait and see. I strongly feel it would cannibalise Santro and eventually Santro would be facing sunset.

Fiat.. We can only feel bad for the great company. Nothing more to say.

Nano seems to be alive and kicking.

Indica sisters are good this month as well. One of my friends was in the market for Vista, at Tirupur, Tamilnadu. Surprisingly, the Vista Quadrajet is not available in that corporation grade city. The dealer informed the TD car will be available after 60 days. I wonder how could this happen.

Verna never ceases to amaze me.

In a way I feel all cars are getting dearer day by day. I may be alone though.

Suzuki's A Star and Estilo are not performing well. Lack of USP here.

With petrol price hiked once more now, let's wait and see how the market reacts this month.

Thanks again GTO. My all time fav thread.

My 2 cents :

Lets not waste space talking about FIAT. Period.
Great showing by Vista - will they land hard the next month or maintain the momentum? I think they will - i have been trying to spot them on roads for last 2 months now. Its only now that I have started spotting them.
Toyota - the Etios twins are not warming the hearts of the Indians. I see the nos going down in future unless they do something about the sub-par interiors. Fortuner too will follow the same route if XUV is as good on road as it sounds on papaer.
Despite Maruti's troubles it has not done so bad. If production ramps up again i think they may tide bad times better than others.

• As expected Santro is the first casualty of Eon.
• Its time for Hyundai to bring in fluidic Sonata.
• With virtually no competition from Tata's, looks like XUV5OO will dominate that space and will easily reach 2.5k if not 3k per month.
• Verito, good comeback and consistently doing well.
• Bolero, any option? I don't see any!
• Grand Vitara and now Kizashi, Maruti yet to break 10Lakh puzzle.
• Post diesel, Beat consistently hitting 5k mark.
• Even Tata Aria sells twice than that of Linea.

That will never be the case. If Maruti shuts down its India operations than also there won't be any improvement in Fiat's sales. They are 2 different companies and attract 2 different kind of customers. Hyundai & Honda might benefit from this situation.

The woes of FIAT are not going to reduce unless

1) they break free from TATA dealerships
2) bring in more models

My BIL works for a TATA showroom & there is an unwritten rule in the showroom that all FIAT enquiries to be shown the TATA equivalent.

Only the enthusiasts would still go for Linea vs Manza when the SE says Saar... main thing is engine. It's the same & TATA has low service & parts cost + you get more space also! Saar you see lot of Indica/Vista taxi & no Linea/Punto taxi because of this.

Since the politics (polititions) do not allow the maket to decide the prices of petrol and diesel it wont be same. I know the PM and Montek Singh Ahluwalia are for it, but others in govt not.

No of diecel cars on road mean more subsidiced diesel usage. To avoid the higher no of sales diecel cars, you need to increase the price difference between petrol and diecel siblings. Anotherway to look at it is , the additional tax collected at the time of purchase of vehicle will be paid back to the owner in the form of subsidies on Diecel they consume during the usage of the vehicle. I would say the additional tax collected should be equavalent to [((5 Years projected total usage (50,000 kms) / (ARAI certified milage)) *[current petrol - diecel price]] / Vehicle MSRP ] * 100 Percentage. There should not be any additional benefit to own a diesel car, leave the Diesel to the CVs that need more power.

I own a petrol car and i dont want to pay for my richer neighbor who drives a diesel car (via gov subsidies).

[ the additional tax collected at the time of purchase of vehicle will be paid back to the owner in the form of subsidies on Diecel they consume during the usage of the vehicle. I would say the additional tax collected should be equavalent to [((5 Years projected total usage (50,000 kms) / (ARAI certified milage)) *[current petrol - diecel price]] / Vehicle MSRP ] * 100 Percentage. There should not be any additional benefit to own a diesel car, leave the Diesel to the CVs that need more power.

I own a petrol car and i dont want to pay for my richer neighbor who drives a diesel car (via gov subsidies).[/quote]

I fully agree with you. In fact most other countries diesel is expensive that petrol , though marginally.I am 100% sure this will start happening this year though in gradual manner. For Swift the tax figure comes out to be Rs75000 ( this is for 50,000 km , which is very conservative ).Once this starts happening I wonder what happens to Co. like TATA and Mahindra whose very existence is based on diesel engines.

don't think the diesel prices or extra tax will happen anytime soon. after all a diesel engine is atleast 40% more FE than a petrol engine and that's good enough reason to not tax diesel cars etc. maybe the govt will bring some kind of marginal tax. What if the diesel owner doesn't actually run 50K over 5 years?. Will the govt refund his money then?

The diesel car owner is not getting any additional benefit. He just paid more initial money and got a more FE car which burns lesser fuel. The petrol car owner could also have done the same. There is no use cribbing now that the diesel car owner is getting more mileage or diesel at a lesser price.

Thanks GTO for the numbers. It has been a bad month for most manufacturers with MSIL suffering the worst. A more than 50% drop is scary. Hyundai has managed to minimise the drop with the eon, though Santro seems to have been cannibalised. I hope the sales are back on track from November, though that looks even more unlikely with the further increase in petrol price.

I am wondering what is the impact to the environment if there is tilt of Diesel car ratio of 50% of overall previously (example only - I don't know the actual numbers) to a Diesel car ratio of 85% in coming years.

Do our roads get more /less of carbon monoxide/ Sulphur compounds as a result of this trend towards diesel? Has any study / assessment done on this by any agency?

thanks.

My thoughts on this topic of taxation are as follows:

Parity is important as government is providing subsidy to diesel users while petrol prices keep rising and hence creating a non-level playing field. At the same time, there are compulsions not to raise diesel prices due to commercial use/inflation etc.

Taxation on diesel vehicles should not be at the point of sales. This is because the usage pattern of a particular buyer and consumption of diesel fuel is not known. Moreover it puts additional burden at one point in time. However it is still necessary to bring parity in some other form.

One of the suggestions is to collect this as diesel tax every year instead of an upfront diesel tax at the point of sale. The collection should be entrusted to insurance companies as insurance companies already have the required data like

- Usage (Lower taxation for lower use, higher for higher use - this being based on insurance being claimed)
- Type of vehicle (cc etc.) (Higher taxation with higher cc)
- Category of vehicle (Private/ commercial) (Less for commercial, more for private)
- Age of vehicle (older vehicles charged more due to lower FE)

Hence a diesel tax should be based on the insurance amount. This would take all above factors into account. Government can compensate the insurance companies part of the tax they collect for the service.

As an example, if an insurance amount is 10,000/ year, government could charge a 100% tax on this as diesel tax. Out of this, 95% could go to the government and 5% to the insurance company as fee for the service. This rate should be lower for commercial vehicles to control inflation and higher for private vehicles and slabs increase with category of vehicles.

Benefits:
- Helps bring parity between diesel/petrol costs without stoking inflation as govt. is unable to raise diesel prices due to its commercial use.
- Prevents an upfront loading as diesel tax at point of sale as this is unfair to a diesel car buyer who may drive less/more.
- Reduces burden of computation/collection as it should be possible for government to collect it from insurance companies.

thanks.