Honda has been a conservative player in the Indian auto market and doesn’t like to do frequent experiments. This approach of the car maker has been working quite well for a long time now. But the recent events such as the diesel ban in Delhi-NCR and norms related to emissions becoming stringent, it resulted into dipping sales of its diesel-powered vehicles and ultimately, raising the demand for petrol-run cars.
Honda was late in bringing a diesel mill for its fleet of cars in India. Now, though it has diesel options in almost all the models on offer, the Japanese car company is still struggling to challenge the market domination that's lead by Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai for the mainstream segments in India. With the compact and mini-SUV grabbing all the attention in the market, Honda wants to further concentrate on these segments.
Honda India plans to launch the hybrid version of the Accord sedan, which will lock horns with the Toyota Camry Hybrid. Apart from the Accord, Honda is also planning to launch the global version of the Civic sedan to fill a gap in its line-up and to compete with the likes of the Hyundai Elantra, Skoda Octavia and Toyota Corolla Altis. But the game changer should be the third car that Honda plans to launch in India, and that would be a mini-SUV (allegedly called the WR-V) which will compete with the Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza and the Ford EcoSport.
Yoichiro Ueno, the newly appointed president and CEO of Honda Cars India, reportedly said that the mini-SUV segment looks promising: "The growth in the category is significant, and we believe that it will continue. Honda is now considering how to capture the SUV segment.”
When asked about the bad response that the compact-MPV Mobilio received, Ueno reportedly said, "We had thought that there would be a strong demand for three-row seating in the private-customer segment. But the customers did not see the benefit. Also, the price was a bit higher than customer expectations."
Ueno also revealed that the company had a 'high inventory' issue, which has now been addressed. The dealerships, he said, had been carrying inventory for 2-2.5 months against healthy timelines of three weeks to a month. This had led to a situation where the dealerships were under financial stress and wanted to liquidate the inventories. Honda handled the situation by decreasing the number of deliveries to dealerships.
Source: Zigwheels.com
