[Jomz]

Originally Posted by rohittunga

[*] The state of Chevrolet is worse than in India with 0 sales in October 2015 and just 10 sales in the previous year. Even MG sells more than Chevy. Must be quite content with their US and Chinese markets.

Vauxhall is GM. I suppose GM is doing pretty well.

[hybridpetrol]

Truly interesting sales numbers!

Originally Posted by GTO

The last time I checked, USA had 700 - 800 cars / 1,000 citizens. In India, it's more like 20 - 30 / 1,000.

While sure it indicates there is a lot of scope for the car market to expand at least 10 times from now, we should see the traffic situation now.
Our roads cannot take even this much traffic - what happens if our market expands 10 times.
Sure there are ways to expand the car market - introduce lease options, provide other innovative ways to car ownership, instead of the current EMI ways etc.
But, USA has few things that is already set right, BEFORE the market has expanded:
a) Infrastructure - Roads with several lanes
b) Traffic Rules - Strict traffic rules supporting the infrastructure, and heavily penalize those who violate the rules
c) Law-friendly citizens - Finally citizens, who are self-regulated and do not try to violate laws at the drop of the hat resulting in a mess.

Many places, car is a requirement, rather than a luxury in USA, due to far away places, compounded by thin population. High per capita income (governed by labour laws) also help in high quality car ownership.

Consider India:
First and foremost, we have a huge population, each with their own ways of operation, irrespective and unmindful of laws. People who need to protect laws, unable to control things and end up allowing anything to happen for the few hundred rupees of bribe. Upkeep of traffic laws for a billion people is after all not an easy job.
Infrastructure - not future ready, and is something that is already not supporting the number of vehicles already present.

With per capita income increasing, the dream of everyone to own a car is not far. When every time I see a newly registered vehicle, I can only say that a new vehicle has added to the mess that we are already in, and going to contribute more to the mess.

[GTO]

Originally Posted by hybridpetrol

Our roads cannot take even this much traffic - what happens if our market expands 10 times.

Rush hour traffic is bad in any major city of the world - be it New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Shanghai or Tokyo.

But, USA has few things that is already set right, BEFORE the market has expanded

And the most important one = economic growth & quality of life outside of the metros. Unlike in India where the concentration is around 7 - 8 top cities, I'm willing to bet that auto sales in the USA are better spread out across the country. The best selling vehicle - the F150 - proves that as its sales are primarily in rural USA.

What we really need is serious development of the semi-urban and rural areas. Big cities will continue to get more crowded until the quality of life in a 'Nasik' can be as satisfying as in a larger city. When I was in the States, I preferred Boston to New York and Orange County to Los Angeles.

High per capita income (governed by labour laws) also help in high quality car ownership.

[Sayeed]

Look at the volumes of Hyundai, they have done more than what the sell in India, and if you add the Kia nos, it's huge in comparison, great going for them.
General Motors why....why ?????? can't you sell same cars in India but I think in India their reputation seems to have gone beyond repair unless there is a drastic change in approach by top management.

[arjab]

Originally Posted by hellmet

Holy moly! For 1/4th our population, they have sales of new vehicles 7 times us? What are they doing with all the old vehicles?

It's not only that. Probably in reality the difference in market size is even greater.
All mature markets, EU, US etc report ACTUAL monthly REGISTRATIONS; i.e. vehicles rolling off the showroom floor into the garages of customers. I think even China quotes actual vehicle registrations.

Whereas in our country, monthly sales are quoted as despatches, popularly known as "dealer offtake" - i.e. factory to dealer. And OEM market share is calculated on this hallowed "offtake" figure.

In India we still do not get actual registration data "officially" through any of the statutory industry bodies such as SIAM, Ministry of Transport etc.

If you factor this in, the gap will be even larger! A rough estimate, says around 75-80% of "offtake vehicles" are actually retailed by dealers in India. This figure varies obviously on the popularity of a particular model, the City/Town, Number of dealers the OEM has etc.

So, we still have a long way to go before we even become visible in the rear view mirror of US vehicle sales, drawing parallel and overtaking comes much later!

[PrideRed]

Wow 65000+ Ford F series equates to 2000 odd trucks a day!
Many say US is moving towards more Eco friendly Fuel Efficient vehicles from the Japanese stable and here we have 3 Trucks dominating the monthly sales.

While the migrants in US prefer Japanese, the native Americans(at least who have been there for over 100-200 years) still prefer GM,Ford and Chrysler.

[invidious]

Hyundai has climbed an uphill battle in the US market. In the late 90s, no one was touching Hyundais . They then started giving a 10 year/ 100000 mile warranty on the engine and transmission and a 5 year / 60000 mile bumper to bumper warranty. With petrol prices tripling, people started looking at the smaller engine options of Hyundai.

[gaurav_3000ad]

Originally Posted by hellmet

Holy moly! For 1/4th our population, they have sales of new vehicles 7 times us? What are they doing with all the old vehicles?

Two words - 'Destruction Derby'

[pamiboy]

The used car market is probably several times bigger. That's where all the cars end up. Many people I know keep changing cars every few months. As someone said earlier, a car is a necessity in rural areas, not a luxury. So you can see really old grannies and grandpas driving old trucks. There is no point comparing this to Indian market.
I'm going to be the devil's advocate here and saying that we should not be promoting cars in India at all given our population, density, road conditions, infrastructure, parking availability, driving culture and respect for law by average Indian.
We should be concentrating more on mass transit such as Electric trains / electric buses on a large scale.

[MercFan]

Originally Posted by hellmet

Holy moly! For 1/4th our population, they have sales of new vehicles 7 times us? What are they doing with all the old vehicles?

Many old cars are broken down and their parts sold in the grey market, recycled. Some of them are exported to third world countries, say the Africas and South American countries.

Americans value their home grown car companies, Ford, GMC, Chevy etc. Almost every American family has a car from these brands.

Toyota, Honda cars are value for money. Most of the immigrants get hold of these brands. After Suzuki's exit, Hyundai has captured a lot of market. People know that Hyundai's are no fun to drive cars, but are practical cars and do the job for you. In a country like US, car is an absolute necessity and a Hyundai does the job perfectly for you.

[sudhirnam]

That´s very interesting data. It is odd to compare this with the volume of Indian cars sold. US has a mature market compared to ours. It is only recently (maybe in the last 10 years or so) that the Indian automobile scenario has started growing.
One big difference is the scale of infrastructure (roads and interstate highways) in the US that cannot be compared to what we have here. May be due to lack of efficient train system and being a bigger country, roads must have been the most important travel means for most Americans.

No wonder F150s and RAMs lead the chart. Americans always loved big vehicles (in fact anything big!. Most people I knew in the US owned at least 2 vehicles: one truck or minivan and a sedan/compact. Only when the gasoline price shooted up, sub compact car sales slightly managed to improve.
The last question they ask while buying a new vehicle would be about fuel effieciency!

Indian car market is catching up slowly and in the coming years (decade, maybe) we might have similar trends. How about China? Any data on car sales from there?

[kashif_baig]

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

Came across this analysis of the US car sales data done by ManagementPunditz for October 2015

While it is not really relevant to us, the numbers are mind boggling(at least to me). The link has the detailed analysis. Sharing the summary and the Top Selling List.
[/list]

Here is info about Canada's sales numbers. The market again is smaller than India's - total sales of 1,63000 and dominated by trucks again

http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2015/11...-2015-ytd.html

http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2015/11...s-figures.html

http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2015/11...-2015-ytd.html

[RYP]

Perhaps more than 7 times our market cap has also a lot to do with the two-wheelers market, as also American Motorcycle industry is pretty tame in terms of volume (Half-a-million for a year). By the way, with sales in the tune of 1.5 Million new two wheelers in the month of October 15', i'm pretty sure India has pumped in more new vehicles on road than USA.

[hybridpetrol]

I see one basic difference between Indian car market and USA market based on the sales figures. The most sold cars in USA are D1 or D2 segment cars by our definition, whereas in USA they are classified as compact or mid size family sedans. Here we have B2 hatchback which are sold as premium vehicles.
We are still considered as a country which is considered a resource center that can supply cheap labor. As long as we feel content by being cheap labourers, our income levels will remain low and we also have to be content with premium features such as body coloured bumpers.

[Gansan]

The American model is unworkable on a global scale. It works there because they manage to keep world petroleum prices pegged to greenbacks. Sooner or later they will have to revisit public transportation.