With likes of Hyundai and General Motors announcing a price hike on their respective product lines, customers who intent to buy a new car will now have to squeeze out their financial budgets slightly more in this festive season. The price hike that has been declared by Hyundai and General Motors will amount up to Rs. 20,000. This hike certainly looks to be pretty significant, but nonetheless, was expected in order to offset the impact of rupee devaluation and rising manufacturing costs. Notably, many other auto companies had already announced a price hike across their entire or selective product range, in order to negate the aforementioned impact.
Tata Motors too declared that it is planning to hike prices in a range between 1 per cent to 1.5 per cent. This price increase will be applicable for the entire product range spanning passenger cars and commercial vehicles. One of the spokesperson of the company said, “Tata Motors plans to increase the prices of its passenger and commercial vehicles around 1-1.5 per cent, depending on the model, either petrol or diesel. This is due to rise in input costs, and after having neutralised to the extent possible through internal efficiencies.”
However, Maruti Suzuki did not disclose anything related to the price hike. The company officials simply said that their experts are evaluating the market vulnerability and any judgement will be duly declared on time. One of the Maruti Suzuki India's spokesperson on being inquired about price hike details, was quoted as saying, “While we evaluate impact of the increasing costs, we would like our customers to have a good festive time. On price increase we continue to evaluate options of how much and when." The very line that 'we would like out customers to have a good festive time' is pretty relaxing for new car buyers and also depicts the strong core values of the auto major when its comes to customer satisfaction.
Hyundai Motor India Ltd had reportedly declared that the price hike by Rs. 4,000 to Rs. 20,000 will be applicable for its entire product range, with the exclusion of recently launched Hyundai Grand i10. This price increase will be effective from 1st October, 2013. On this developmental, Rakesh Srivastava, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, HMIL, said, “The rupee depreciation and inflationary trends have impacted our input costs. We have been absorbing most of the costs but now we are compelled to consider the price increase.”
Notably, Hyundai has a strong market presence in India with its wide product range. This is evident from the availability of many car models spanning entry level compact car Eon to high-spec Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) Santa Fe. At present, Eon can be availed by customers at a price range between Rs. 2.85 lakh and Rs. 3.91 lakh. Santa Fe is priced between Rs. 23.40 lakh and Rs. 26.49 lakh (all prices are ex-showroom Delhi).
General Motors declared that its fourth price hike of the year will be applicable for the entire product range that is available in India. The declared price hike on various models is between Rs. 2,000 and Rs. 10,000. Notably, earlier in this month, the auto company had hiked prices of Beat, SAIL and multi-purpose vehicle Enjoy by up to Rs. 10,000. And this announcement will be the another round of price hike by up to 1.5 per cent across all models. P Balendran, General Motors India vice president, said, “We are increasing the prices of all models, including those which recently saw a hike, at a range of 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent.”
On 17th September, 2013, Toyota Kirloskar Motor had announced a price hike in its key models by up to Rs. 24,000. This price increase will be effective from 21st September, 2013 in order to partly lessen impact of the higher cost of raw materials and rupee devaluation.
