[Carz77]

Kia immediately setup a manufacturing plant in India, built a solid dealer / service station network pan India and launched one excellent product that catered to wide audience (with 18+ variants). What a well executed plan. Hats off.

Kia+Hyundai have all the ammunitions to spoil Suzuki's party provided they focus on Indian consumers and bring competitively priced cars in mass market as well.

Internationally also, I think Kia is trying to compete with top auto companies. In one of the recent ads, the K5 is challenging BMW 3 series (not sure of the real picture though).

[fhdowntheline]

Originally Posted by theAutomaniac

According to what I believe, NO LEVEL OF PRODUCT DEVELPOMENT CAN JUSTIFY ISSUES WITH BRAKES OF A CAR!!!! If a carmaker has issues with the brakes, it is a clear case of the manufacturer being too busy counting money without caring about their customer!

Earlier Hyundai cars (before 2017) were extremely reliable and they had top notch customer support.
However, what is the case nowadays?? Nowadays, they are only focusing on selling more products instead of delivering products which have more quality!

In today's era, Hyundai cars have a lot of quality issues even with basic things like brakes! These issues were never heard of even in some of the most unreliable cars globally! Why do you think these issues are coming up from a brand whose cars never had an issue earlier?? Has their management become inefficient? No! They've just become cunning and greedy!

The issue here is, I do not hate Hyundai, but I'm hating the fact that they are exploiting the customer to the core!

I think we are taking the recent issue of braking in the Seltos and over-generalising it to all Hyundai-Kia products which is unnecessary. It is an important issue (I am a recent Creta owner myself), but relative to the yearly sales figures of those OEMs, I would like to believe that quite a small number of people are likely affected, and a smaller number have been directly been involved in a majorly unsafe situation.
Besides, why dont we also look at Toyota's relatively smaller volume of sales and its susceptibility to airbag deployment failures?
And what to say of MSIL which has (almost affectionately now) earned itself the sobriquet of tin-can maker, and has never acknowledged these issues, EVER?
Lets apply a normal perspective on this please?

[AJ18]

Hyundai is a direct competitor to MS with the wide range of mass market cars on offer with the range of drive trains. Kia's market share is commendable since they just have 2 mass market cars on offer, credit can be given to the rise of small SUVs.

The Alto can probably never be dethroned, unless cannibalised by MS themselves. Kia needs to compete with the B segment hatchbacks (Swift, Baleno) to break into the higher level of sales in the Market.

[Nav-i-gator]

As much as I want to vote Yes, it is highly unlikely in at least a decade. Infact, what we need is erosion of Maruti's dominance, while rest all of the players gaining equal market share.

If and when India becomes competitive to at least 5-6 car makers, we would start getting international spec models.

[vsrivatsa]

Voted for "No".

The results are out for October 2020 sales and looks like Maruti had another blockbuster month:

Brezza takes the pole position again from Sonet and Venue - Link

Maruti has increased its dominance in the top 10 list taking 7 spots

Brezza No 1 Sub 4m UV – Beats Venue, Sonet

The 8th, and 9th best selling cars October’20 were again models with a Maruti badge. The brands were Eeco and Brezza respectively. Kia Sonet takes the 10th spot with sales of 11,721 units. With the Hyundai Venue missing from the list, it is clear that Maruti Brezza has managed to take the number 1 spot when it comes to sub 4 meter UV sales category. Interestingly, of the three sub 4m cars, it is only Brezza which is offered in just a single petrol engine option whereas the other two are offered with 2 petrol and 1 diesel engine option; along with multiple gearbox options and state of the art features.

[Carma2017]

Originally Posted by vsrivatsa

Voted for "No".

The results are out for October 2020 sales and looks like Maruti had another blockbuster month:

Brezza takes the pole position again from Sonet and Venue - Link

Attachment 2075817

The scarier thing is that actual overall retail sales are way higher than numbers quoted by Suzuki by at least 20000 cars as per people in the know at Suzuki.

[andafunda]

Originally Posted by fhdowntheline

I think we are taking the recent issue of braking in the Seltos and over-generalising it to all Hyundai-Kia products which is unnecessary. It is an important issue (I am a recent Creta owner myself), but relative to the yearly sales figures of those OEMs, I would like to believe that quite a small number of people are likely affected, and a smaller number have been directly been involved in a majorly unsafe situation.

The issue is that the manufacturer in question doesn't even bother to acknowledge the issue in India, while its behavior is completely different in western markets.

According to your own post, MSIL has themselves said they make "tin cars". Atleast they do admit.

To be sure, cars are complex machines and things will fail. How the manufacturer approaches a problem is often indicative of their attitude towards the market.

[theAutomaniac]

Originally Posted by Carma2017

The scarier thing is that actual overall retail sales are way higher than numbers quoted by Suzuki by at least 20000 cars as per people in the know at Suzuki.

You mean they are hiding numbers to show them in the months when retali sales are low?

[turbo]

Voted no

The Kia story will, eventually, one day, come to a halt when they have reached a saturation point in the very urban markets they target.

Every medium sized city has a maruti dealer, whereas Kia is not even present in every district.

[theAutomaniac]

Originally Posted by fhdowntheline

I think we are taking the recent issue of braking in the Seltos and over-generalising it to all Hyundai-Kia products which is unnecessary. It is an important issue (I am a recent Creta owner myself), but relative to the yearly sales figures of those OEMs, I would like to believe that quite a small number of people are likely affected, and a smaller number have been directly been involved in a majorly unsafe situation.
Besides, why dont we also look at Toyota's relatively smaller volume of sales and its susceptibility to airbag deployment failures?
And what to say of MSIL which has (almost affectionately now) earned itself the sobriquet of tin-can maker, and has never acknowledged these issues, EVER?

MS always says that they do not prioritize safety! Yeah! That's the reality of the leading carmaker of the country!

Toyota also had issues with their airbags, but I think they are reduced in newer cars!

But then, Hyundai doesn't say anything about the safety aspect of their cars and neither have they acknowledged or tried to resolve the issues with their cars! Also, issues with other carmakers are rare, not as frequent as Hyundai and this is exactly why I'd never trust Hyundai for their cars!

They used to be great years ago, but not anymore, unfortunately!

[Carma2017]

Originally Posted by theAutomaniac

You mean they are hiding numbers to show them in the months when retali sales are low?

Not at all. Manufacturers report wholesale numbers (dispatches to dealers) only not retail sales (actual sales to customers). So, in October, Suzuki actually sold more vehicles than they dispatched. So, they consumed some part of their network stock. That in turn means that November would be another high production month, Diwali and Corona Virus notwithstanding.

[avdhesh15]

Originally Posted by blackwasp

.

Please explain the meaning of others on the poll.

[raghukodali]

It is not just a point of Kia-Hyundai and MS. Electric is an inflection point in automobiles and can be very similar to 2007 for mobile phones. Nokia-Motorola-Blackberry which ruled pre 2007 vanished without a trace post 2007 with iPhone immediately followed by Android phones.

2007 changed the peoples perspective of what a phone should do.

I believe this decade + a few more years will decide who will be the market leader in automobiles. It can be one of the car companies we already know or it can very well be a new startup car company doing research in batteries as of today and ready to launch a car in a few years.

[Muscle Boyy]

It can be said that Maruti works like a government entity in our market.They are more than happy with the non appealing products for our roads.No diesel engines,not even turbo petrols,no EVs.. I'm still clueless what they are upto.They just want to sell cars and make profit.If the term 'Innovation' was there in the cards,they would've introduced competent engines, transmission options and first in segment features.And on top of that...the weird justifications they have regarding the running cost of diesel engines.Their long term dominance is very uncertain.

[1.2TSI7DSG]

I see it in the perspective that Maruti is built on the premise that a car is a functional object. It gets you from point a to point b in the least possible cost. Hence the value propositions- High FE, Cheap spares, high availability of spares/service centres, etc.

On the other hand, almost all other brands (including H&K), have built it on desirability. I want to own a Skoda/Hyundai/Kia despite what it is. In function, it is very similar to what Maruti offers. In fact, ofter high desirability brands have lower functionality as compared to their austere peers - eg BMW 3 vs Skoda superb, Skoda service vs Maruti service.

With Ola's and Uber's disrupting the core need Maruti will definitely have challenges in the future. They however will appeal and remain the highest market share in the functional space.

Despite my efforts to not judge them, their pathetic attempt at being NEXA by offering functional vehicles in a premium channel appears to fail. There is no desirability in the NEXA cars. Offer Jimny, you create a longing to drive it.

Given the context, TML has done a better job and broken away from the functional image of Indica, to desirability image of the Harrier, Altroz, Tiago. In fact, all their adverts no longer carry the "Tata" word which is typically and traditionally associated with SUMO, Indica which were highly functional vehicles.