Backed by aggressive product and powertrain initiatives, Tata Motors grabbed for itself the top slot in the SUV space from Hyundai Motor India with sales of 326,354 units until November, data from automotive consultancy firm JATO Dynamics showed.
Tata Motors and M&M together sold 628,970 SUVs in the domestic market in the first 11 months of the year, as against 450,102 units sold by Hyundai-Kia. While sales of Tata-Mahindra rose 67%, those of Hyundai-Kia in the segment went up by around 5% in this period. The value dynamics, however, are slightly different, with some Tata-Mahindra models priced at the budget end of the spectrum and costing about a lakh of rupees less than competing Korean models.
With this, Tata Motors and Mahindra now account for two out of every five SUVs sold in the country. “The domestic OEMs decided early to ride the SUV wave,” said Ravi Bhatia, president at JATO Dynamics. Their product interventions, built around multiple powertrain options, helped boost volumes and market share, he said. More than two-thirds of sales in the passenger vehicle segment for Tata Motors came from SUVs this year. Tata Nexon has emerged as the best-selling model in the SUV space this year.
Shailesh Chandra, managing director (passenger vehicle business unit), Tata Motors, said that the company has outperformed the market, expanding volumes 65% (vis-a-vis industry growth of 24%) on the back of its strong product portfolio, and is undertaking de-bottlenecking measures to enhance capacity by nearly a fifth to meet customer demand for its products. Rajesh Jejurikar, executive director (automotive and farm equipment sector), M&M, recently told ET that the company made a few strategic choices and decided to focus on SUVs in 2020.
