[srishiva]

Its all got to do with the market size. More companies are not in India which is not providing a healthy competitive environment.
You cant expect all companies to come and start investing in manufacturing with the dismal numbers they get barring a few segments.

[amitk26]

I would lay blame squarely on companies and consumer's tendency of costly thus good.

Tax is not the sole reason to milk customers. The outragious premium pricing is the real cause

[shankar.balan]

we have been ripped off for a long time now

taxes, cess, surcharges etc that we pay, never come back in the form of proper infrastructure and safe driving environment etc.

We pay Road Tax on new vehicles for proper, well maintained, well lit roads - I d like to see a few "proper roads" in Bangalore, where the highest road tax applies.

Cost of fuel is highest here in Bangalore/ Karnataka - made so to an extent by the Infrastructure Cess levied on fuel.

This has been levied since 2002-2003 as far as I know. So where is the infrastructure?

As long as we have parochial politics and people like HDD and HDK around, this is not going to change.

Public-Private partnership is one way of getting things done.

Stopping the building/ construction mafia is definitely necessary.

We need an educated, empowered "corporation" and "town planning" department -

We would benefit so much from a first class resource like Ms Sheila Dixit!

[Thad E Ginathom]

We pay Road Tax on new vehicles for proper, well maintained, well lit roads - I d like to see a few "proper roads"...

Londoners used to say the same thing! Our pot holes might not have compared with Indian ones, but there was a period when London's road maintenance was very poor.

Now they don't have roads: they have bus and cycle lanes, with some small space left for cars when they are lucky!

[panicslayer]

Originally Posted by agentsmith2

Is that after considering the indian-paki rupee currency exchange rate Pakistani rupee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yup that's considering the xchange rate in mind

INDUS MOTOR COMPANY LTD - Home
PAK SUZUKI MOTOR COMPANY LIMITED :
Honda | Pakistan

Have a look yourself

[san2]

I think the best solution is to shift to the techologically advanced transport like bullock carts and cycles

[xtremethunder]

Originally Posted by deepakvrao

Cars in India are cheaper than total cost of ownership in Singapore AFAIK.

+1 deepakvrao.
We must be happy that the cars are not costlier than Singapore. Being a city-state they import all cars from europe/japan/malaysia. They have something called as COE - Certificate of Entitlement which is valid for 10 yrs which is like S$20000+ for cars below & above 1600cc plus the 100% duty on the car price .
Running cost as well is quite exorbitatnt , thanks to the parking charges & ERP (Electronic Road Pricing) plus strict traffic rules

Inspite of all these factors for a population of 5 mil there are 1.2 mil vechicles as per the statistics from July 2009.

[Durango Dude]

Despite the 'ripoff' there are soo many vehicles on the road, hadn't it been for the 'rip off' there'd hardly be any roads to drive your car. it would be one permanent gridlock.

[Crank]

I am just wondering why Toyota Corolla costs around 12 lakhs in India, but just around 7 Lakhs (upon conversion from USD) in the US. Similar is the case with Honda Civic. I do understand that it is to do something with the economy of scale. But still I am not able to digest the near 100% increase in the cost.

For example Civic sold around 19000 in the US in Feb 2011, while City and Civic together sold around 3500 at the same time in India. If Honda and Toyota price their cars, (Civic and Corolla) at a price below 10 lakhs, won't they sell like hot cakes that would boost the sales figures?

Corolla being a basic car in many western countries is positioned as a premium car in India. Is this not demeaning India? Thoughts please.

Just now saw another thread here opened a long while back - http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/collec...ipped-off.html. And this is still active.

Hence, can the mods merge this with that one.

[Crank]

Import duties are there to make sure that those car manufacturers invest in India and create employment for our population. However even if they can produce the car in India at a lower cost considering the cheap labour and cheap raw materials, they still sell that at a premium. When will this change?

[dhanushs]

Its not the manufacturers, its the taxes that make the cars expensive. I think the reasons are stated pretty clearly in the other thread.

[Crank]

Originally Posted by dhanushs

Its not the manufacturers, its the taxes that make the cars expensive. I think the reasons are stated pretty clearly in the other thread.

I don't think taxes could add 100% to the cost. Also if the cars are made in India, due to lower cost of production and lesser levies the cost should come down naturally.

[Gany]

I guess the companies would justify the higher cost of cars in india for - higher tax+higher Salary for employees+higher cost of setting up facilities(again tax etc)+higher transport cost(distribution)+hgiher number of varient/numbers sold+...

[Crank]

Originally Posted by Gany

I guess the companies would justify the higher cost of cars in india for - higher tax+higher Salary for employees+higher cost of setting up facilities(again tax etc)+higher transport cost(distribution)+hgiher number of varient/numbers sold+...

Higher Tax - Actually many of the car companies get a lot of tax sanctions in the name of liberalized economy and govt. promoting industrial growth. E.g., Hyundai in Chennai.

Higher Salary for employees - Do you mean to say that an average american automobile blue collar gets less than that in India? Then american's can get a work permit and work in India. :-)

Higher cost of setting up facilities - I know that the govt. bureaucracy/babudom certainly put hurdles on the way. But conditions have improved a lot with SEZs and other such initiatives. But cost cannot be more than that of setting up a plant in the US/Europe.

Higher transport cost - Cost can never be higher than that in US/Europe. But there are infrastructure challenges like good roads.

Higher numbers sold - Yes, there is a challenge. And my question is basically around this. If the cars are more affordable, there will be large numbers selling. So at a lesser cost of production and large numbers selling the price can certainly come down.

[dharmana]

The Suzuki Kizashi Manual transmission costs 20000 dollars in the USA which is equivalent to 9 lakhs. Here in India we have to buy the same car for 17 lakhs just because it is a fully imported car!

The 8 lakhs extra which we shell out is pocketed by the govt as we have 100% duty on imported cars. The maruti CEO says they want to test the sales of a low volume car by importing it and if they get a positive response, then they would start assembling or manufacturing it. The CEO must be a 60year old retard who doesn't have the vision to understand how they are going to get a positive response if Indians have to buy it at double its original price. Then those sales rep are going to say that the sales are dismal and it would not be wise to start production of Kizashi in India. If they had manufactured it and priced at around 9 lakhs, this car would have blown the socks off other manufacturers and they would have followed suit by starting their production plants here and we would have got performance cars priced reasonably below 10 lakhs. As long as the attitude of these Indian CEOs or the govt towards taxation changes, we Indians have to put up with crap cars optimised for mileage with a budget of 10 lakhs. The same goes for all companies, if they start local manufacturing, all the civics, crvs, accords and fortuners will be within reach of most indians at around 10-12 lakhs. But alas, these performance cars are only in the reach of rich people only because of the ridiculous pricing.

Following are the pricing comparisions of cars in USA and India and the difference is only due to 100% import duty imposed on these cars

USA INDIA
CIVIC 7 lakhs 14 lakhs
CRV 12 lakhs 24 lakhs
ACCORD 10 lakhs 20 lakhs
Fortuner 12 lakhs 24 lakhs
BMW 320D 19 lakhs 38 lakhs

This shows how Indians are being ripped off as they have to pay so much tax to Indian govt not only for the exotic cars like porsche, ferrari etc but even for normal vehicles owned by foreign companies. They are just killing the performance enthusiasm in India which is in the inception stage. I wish there's an Anna Hazare like movement to force the govt to reduce the import duties!!