[Vians]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Counter-perspective:

Maruti did mess up their BS6 diesel transition, and Toyota seem to have no intention of increasing their segment footprint in India and are a rather conservative, risk-averse organization.
Interesting times

Maruti still has time to test the waters and bring the diesel back as we still don't know about their BS6 diesel engine design status. Maruti has a luxury which others don't have. They don't need to be the first mover. Let's wait till December and see if diesel demand is there. If there is significant demand, let's see if Maruti brings back the diesel in BS6 avatar.

Cab market in south prefer diesel but they also prefer a robust diesel engine. I am not sure if the competition can offer it with the current diesel BS6 lineup. We have to wait and see. We have seen few users already complain about regeneration with Kia Seltos.

Originally Posted by pavanmadhini

In the next 5 years time, I'm willing to bet that the top selling model in the country will be in the 12-15 lakh price range. And that price range will further increase in 10 years time. And I am not sure Maruti can compete in those price ranges. Maybe Toyota can, if they get serious about India, but not Maruti.

.

The only way I see this happening is if Indian rupees depreciate considerably. Yes, that's a possibility and that means lower sales for entire segment and Maruti getting higher market share.

[Stribog]

Originally Posted by kiku007

“Cyclical degrowth (not even recession)” – That’s a nice term, I guess. It’ll be very useful for the next couple of years at the minimum.

Check for data that include GDP, Per-capita income and car ownership data from India, China and South Korea for the past three decades. Based on the history, current situation and the forecast, I don't think there’s going to be explosive growth and subsequent demand for cars like the Seltos in the next five years. Beyond that, I don’t know. If you think otherwise then I’d love to hear how and why. Is it because the "Cyclical degrowth" will self-heal itself?

Sure yeah, companies like GM, Nissan and Honda do deserve brickbats for their performance. Markets like India and China have always been challenging for global automakers. The learning curve was steep. They poured money if they thought there was light at the end of the tunnel. But that's not happening anymore, is it?

Economic cycles are intrinsic to any and all market driven economies. This has been observed from the mid 17th century on when free maket economies started appearing. Take the US, just from 1950-YTD, they have had 10 such cycles, the only variable here is how long does each phase (Growth > Peak > Contraction > Recession)

Growing at the average of 5% we are now is not 'recession' by any yardstick, except unless it is a political agenda pushing the narrative that "the Indian economy has been ruined by Modi".

Indian cycles since 1990 seem to run for 3 odd years (we don't have data on this unlike the US does and this is my observation) and we are midway through our contraction phase. India and China have for the past 3 decades skipped the recession phase and we go right back to Growth phase. China though given the extent of state control is an outlier in the past 200 years (as they also didn't have a colony they could rob like pretty much all Western nations did)


On market size, as I have already pointed out, India went from not even in the top 15 markets in 1990 to around rank 11-12 in 2008 and is now the 4th largest automarket in the world and on track to be the 3rd largest in the next 2-3 years. These are facts.

Look at some production numbers,

1990 - India produced 350,000 vehicles total. SK 1.4 Mn vehicles, China 500,000 vehicles (will use this same order India / SK / China below minus the text)

2000- 800,000 / 3 Mn / 2Mn

2010 - 3.5 Mn / 4.2 Mn / 18 Mn

So from 2000 to 2020, India expanded production 4 fold while S Korea managed to achieve a fraction of this growth, China though is in an entirely different league.

2019 - 5.3 Mn / 4 Mn / 28 Mn

India is tracking China by around 15 years (our reforms came about 11 years later and were / still is weaker) while Korean auto market has actually reduced.

If you track economy to auto market size, the Indian market will double this coming decade (unless we count the market disruptions like EV's, ride sharing which are still nascent). If you look at Japan, their production has contracted by 30% in this same time period (from 1990) when their economy was at a peak.

By any yardstick, the growth has been both explosive in both percentage and absolute numbers and consistent.

Whether Kia / Hyundai will be # 1 is dependent on their market offerings. The very fact that Kia has gone on to become the #4 ( or is it 5?) in the Indian automarket purely on the basis of 1 + 15 lakh car should tell you about the appetite the market has.

This is where I would link the likes of Honda, GM who despite having spent years in the market could not come up with one compelling market offering (aside from Beat and City respectively) and the blame is entirely on them.


Multiple studies have put Indian per capita income in 2030 (just a decade from now) on a nominal basis to be around $ 6,000 (a 3 fold increase), and with the larger auto market (accounting for disruptions) coupled with a massive infrastructural boost esp in the highway sector, this sector is imo going to see a massive growth phase.

[kiku007]

Thanks @stribog.

So there's no data to prove the cyclic growth/de-growth phenomenon wrt India and there's multiple studies estimating a three fold increase in per capita income in a decade? Very interesting. I'll watch this space.

[vsrivatsa]

Originally Posted by GRAND23

There was a question floating in mind for long time and I thought today to put it in front of all BHPians. Can Hyundai/Kia be No.1 manufacturer in India in next 5-10 years?

This is an interesting thread. In fact if there is anyone with volumes that are comparable to Maruti then its only the Hyundai/Kia duo.

My Opinion:
The problem I see for the Hyundai and Kia brands is that they are not selling two distinct set of cars but an overlapping category of cars with some brand specific visual changes. In most cases, I think the two competing products from these two brands would share 80% of the same base parts with some 20% differences. So, we have to first of all wait and see how this pans out.

For example we have the Hyundai Venue in market but not the Kia Sonet yet. We have the Kia Seltos in market but not the 2020 Hyundai Creta yet. So in my opinion a bit early to make any claims. In fact, if the 2020 Creta ends up losing a lot of volume (based on the negative comments on the 2020 Creta thread), then what will be its impact to the Hyundai-Kia relationship is something to be seen.

On the Topic of Safety:
Now, going off this topic, some people have spoken about safety and yes, its true that while the general perception has been that Hyundai makes safer cars than Maruti there has been no real proof point of this.

In fact, all of Hyundai's sub-4m cars are now going to be based on the K1 Platform which was introduced with the new Santro. Now, the Santro scored only 2 stars in the crash test. The Venue & Sonet are based on this K1 platform - we can only speculate at this point that the safety ratings for these would possibly not be that great. On the other hand, Maruti's Brezza has a respectable 4 star GNCAP rating...

The larger ones such as the Seltos and Creta are based on the Elantra/K2 platform and hence the possibility of higher GNCAP scores is there but that is an assumption as of now.

[JoeMichael]

I don't think Hyundai -Kia wants to fight MSIL at the volume game. While we can bash Maruti as much as we want on the safety aspect , that fact is that they are playing to the galleries. They have made vehicles as the market wants it.

Secondly Maruti is very good at playing the risk free game - they wait for a competitor to test the waters with a trend / a new sub-seqment , and come up with a product catered to the market demand. If the market shifts towards more safe vehicles Maruti will surely be agile about it as well.

The only way any competitor can beat Maruti is if the 10+ lakh seqment considerably outsells the lower seqments , which is a very remote possibility - if at all -as it stands.

[NTO]

https://www.cartoq.com/maruti-brezza...hyundai-venue/

This says Vitara Brezza outsold Sonet and Venue individually. However, combined, Kia+Hyundai outsold Maruti's Brezza. Hope the Korean Duo dethrones Maruti. If this happens, it will lead our market to cars with engineering finesse, world class safety and features!

Calculate Nahi "Kia" kya?