Friday, November 18, 2011
By Pranjal Gera
Diesel Cars’ Long Waiting Periods and Big Offers on Petrol Cars
After a long time the auto industry biggies are up with some tempting offers for their consumers on petrol variants of cars. The discount on vehicles ranges from INR 18,000 to INR 44,000; these include free insurance, free petrol, gift cheques, freebies etc. These available discounts and offers by the automakers are to divert the customers from booking or purchasing the diesel powered cars as the wait period for many popular diesel cars is of around 8 to 10 months.
All major Car sellers in the nation like Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai Motors contain getting good number of booking for diesel car across their nationwide dealership network, especially of Maruti Swift and the new Hyundai Verna Fluidic. But these companies are unable to meet car buyer’s demand due to lack of production capacity. Even Volkswagen is going through the same stage.
The diesel cars demand is also on increase because petrol prices have escalated from Rs 58.37 in January 2011 to Rs 66.84 at present; an increase of nearly Rs 9, while diesel stands at Rs 40.91 currently and was Rs 37.75 in first month of 2011; a hike of merely Rs 3.
Chief General Manager- Marketing for Maruti Suzuki, Mr. Shashank Srivastava, revealed some shocking figures that till the month of April Diesel powered Cars had 31 to 32 percent share in the entire sales of auto sector and now it rockets up to nearly 50 percent.
According to Mr. Srivastava, two months back the diesel cars that accounted for 65 percent of total sales of Maruti, have swelled up by more than 85 percent. On the other hand Hyundai Motors representative informs that company actually had planned to sell around 8,000 diesel cars, but on contrast the demand was much more than expected, hence it has resulted in long queues of waiting for Hyundai best sellers Verna Fluidic and i20.
This is also the time for Car Buyers to think whether they actually want to wait for a Diesel Car or take some good offer on the Petrol Car. Thought It entirely depends upon the average distance, for which Car is going to be used.
