With Hindustan Motors, Ambassador and General Motors have gone, and the market majorly owned by top two rankers both in volume as well as luxury sales, there is a clear hint of a magnanimous transition on the boards for Indian auto sector. With 17 car companies in our country at present, many seem to be losing their grip completely, while many companies already seem to be eager to replace them. Some radical changes happening right now can be listed as follows:-
- The FAME scheme and Prime Minister's motto to build India as an all-electric traversing country by 2030. This shall eradicate the existing manual and diesel and petrol-based vehicles to scrap market. Even the hybrids are stricken out of the FAME benefits.
-Diesel vehicles already losing sales due to its equivalence with petrol-based vehicles and high maintenance costs.
-Maruti and Hyundai leading the market share while all the other manufacturers stagger with their limited sales, irrespective of heavy investments they make every year to make their mark in here. Growing inclination towards big cars with growing per capita income of our citizens, making the scenario even worse for companies like Volkswagen(1.6%), Ford(3%), Skoda(0.45%) and Fiat(0.0018%) in terms of their declining market share.
-Pouring in of new companies like Tesla, Kia, SAIC, and French major Peugeot which are expected to replace the gone and the ones on the verge of going companies.
Thus, this shift is now becoming predictable day by day. Volkswagen is the largest car manufacturer in the world, while its grounds are transparently shaky in ou country. In a decade, it has hardly reached sales of half a century of all its variants in a year. With Ford, you get all the top notch branded vehicles to ride like EcoSport, Endeavour, Figo, Aspire, but when it comes to their sales, the matter boils down to mere 91,405 vehicles in 2016-17 overall. All this in more than 20 years of presence in the country. Somewhat similar is the scenario with Fiat and Skoda, and Nissan also seems to follow the same footsteps.
It seems that the customer base is rigid on Maruti and Hyundai models. The coming of newer brands shall add on to the losing charm of the already existing companies and give them a strong reason to quit, just like GM and others. Also, the new entries bring with them new designs and technological promises that newly arising rural customers get attracted to in numbers. Thus, it is evident that the shift is happening and in the next decade, our transportation system is bound to look completely changed.
