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CHENNAI, JULY 14 (IANS): The second largest car maker in India Hyundai Motor India Ltd while continuing to bet on diesel powered vehicles is also looking at faster demand recovery from tier 2/3 cities, said a senior official on Tuesday.
Hyundai Motor also launched its new premium sports utility vehicle (SUV) Tucson for the Indian market.
Speaking to reporters, Tarun Garg, Director (Sales, Marketing and Service) said the timing of Tucson's launch is right as there are over five lakh Creta buyers in the country who are looking for an upgrade to a premium SUV.
The new Tucson's starting price is about Rs 22 lakh.
"With over 6.5 million customers worldwide, Tucson is one of the best-selling SUV's across the world," S.S. Kim, Managing Director and CEO told reporters.
He said the model was unveiled at the Auto Expo 2020.
Garg said the booking for diesel engine models are growing and the demand is across the country and more so from tier 2/3 cities.
He said when the fuel prices go up, buyers will look at fuel economy and diesel engines are fuel efficient.
According to Garg, Hyundai Motor has got over 45,000 bookings for its SUV Creta model and 56 per cent of that are for diesel engine variant.
Similarly, one third of the booking for Venue and Verna are for diesel models, Garg said.
"SUV lovers want much more than the fuel economy which diesel vehicles offer. It appears demand will stablilise at this level. There is also good demand for petrol models," Garg added.
Queried about the pay cuts implemented by various companies and its impact on buyers scaling down their model preference Garg said he is not seeing any such trend.
According to him, buyers prefer to come to the showroom to take delivery of new cars even though Hyundai Motor offers to deliver the car at their door step.
Garg said it is not possible to predict the likely sales for 2020 as some states have Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.
He said the company is watching the market behaviour on a monthly basis.
Garg said during June 2020, the company has reached 75 per cent of June 2019 demand figures, In July 2020 the car maker plans to touch 90 per cent of July 2019 levels.
On the availability of components as the company is planning to start third shift in its plant Garg said the localisation levels are very high and the dependence on components from China is very low.
According to Garg the company's supply chain is ready to meet the demand for increased components as third shift production is soon to start.
