Re: BS6 impact on the Indian taxi scene? Increased cost of Diesel engined car and the narrow difference between Petrol and Diesel fuels hardly justifies diesel taxi within city. In BS6 era it cannot be justified and even if options are available, CNG will eat lion's share followed by pure petrol. The lower maintenance and insurance costs of non-diesels also add significant margin to taxi owners.
Now there are options available in affordable electric cars to lower the demand of diesel taxies even further. At the moment there are expensive and lower range options, but things will suddenly change in few months. Let us see how they will be taken by car OEMs.
Diesel taxi market will shrink but long distance trips will continue to be served by it. Still, compact sedans will not have major share there given major investment cost. Instead MUVs and regular sedans will drive the commercial market. Maruti Suzuki
I have seen new Heartec based DZire with yellow number plate. Most likely they have stopped production of old gen DZire. It is obvious MSIL wont give up that market share easily. They wont have DDIS 1.3 anymore and they don't need. I have seen so many petrol Dezires that it makes me believe diesel is losing its sheen faster than we're expecting. They will continue with BS6 1.2 petrol coupled with CNG for DZire and few other cars using same engine for taxi.
Further up they have covered Ertiga with BS6 1.5 petrol and CNG. Their sell from VDi was fast decreasing. So they have much to bother anyway. Ertiga will still sell highest in MUV taxi market. Ciaz will definitely have reduced consumers as they usually don't like boot to be occupied with CNG tank instead of airport luggage.
If they bring in BS6 1.5 DDiS (which I believe they will in 2021) they will have sustained market dominance. Hyundai
Aura for private and Xcent for commercial segment. They have found a way to differentiate product among image based consumers. Being similar in size and BS6 compliant engines in petrol, diesel and CNG means they have secured their share in compact sedan taxi market. Hyundais have higher than average maintenance costs and that will continue to play role. Still, smaller capacity diesel will have huge advantage for Hyundai as this will be the only diesel with capacity lower than 1.5. Honda
Upgrade of iDtec 1.5 to BS6 ensured Honda Amaze continue to offer options. They will lose on big CNG share though if not brought that variant fast. Both petrol and diesel offers decent performance and fuel economy and will continue its run on in city as well as outstation.
Both 1.5 engines for city will be BS6 keeping their share in premium sedan fleet, but not for long. It was expensive in the first place and the hotel fleet (who is their primary customer segment) will seek electric options which are not that distant. Ford
Similar to Hyundai with their portfolio. Aspire and Figo have found their engines for BS6 with petrol, diesel and CNG. Competent engines with inexpensive maintenance can easily trump Hyundai except for the perception of premiumsness. Tata
They have surrendered Taxi market to Maruti, Hyundai, Ford, Honda as a part of brand building among private consumers. No new cars were allocated to fleet except that they recently have sold few copies of Hexa to make some money from the demising product. Old age products like Indigo CS, Vista, Indica have their sales falling over and might have stopped by now. Along with it, mid age products, Zest and Bolt, have not been updated for BS6.
Will they be axed? I think they can continue producing Zest with petrol engine from Tiago with CNG as option and electric engine from Nexon. This combination has enough taker and will have enough presence in Fleet. Their X1 platform is not going away until Nexon is moved onto Alpha architecture. So Zest don't have much production problem. But I don't think they will invest for this minuscule sales. Hexa was being offered with fleet segment and I presume they can offer Gravitas to fleet after Hexa demise.
Tigor EV needs Ziptron to gain sales. In existing form it isn't cheap to buy anyway and Ziptron isn't that costly being mostly manufactured in India. This has potential to gain sales as the electric running costs are even lower than CNG. Good for in city commute by Ola/Uber. Noting exciting as of now for the fleet. Their strategy is very different compared to mainstream players. Mahindra
Their taxi market in entry level is on KUV. 1.2 Diesel being axed does not matter much as it wasn't sold much either. The petrol had some takers and now they have unveiled electric version with motor shared with Logan. In both cases I don't expect it to gain much momentum until electric is upgraded with long range battery and doesn't cost much. It is not coming until 2022.
On further higher up their engines are getting BS6 upgrade which should help commercial players who run intercity. Further up segment is not that price concious. BS6 upgrade cost is ok for most. Toyota
The reliable 1.4D going out and so their 1.2/1/5P we can safely expect Toyota don't want to gain anything from cheap market. They have made up enough money from old platform and will free up some resources. Innova is their bread and butter for fleet with fat margins and they will have even more margin with Alphard/Hiace once brough in.
On a sidenote, used car sales is likely to zoom in the commercial market. Trusted cars, known maintenance means BS4 cars will live longer life than they supposed to be doing. |