Honda Cars India, the local unit of the Japanese automaker, on Monday launched its mid-sized sport utility vehicle (SUV) Elevate, marking its return to the popular SUV sub-segment in the country.
The starting ex-showroom price for this model is ₹11 lakh, and the top-end variant is priced at ₹16 lakh.
The SUV, which will compete with South Korean rivals like the Hyundai Creta and Kia’s Seltos, along with recent Japanese entrants like Suzuki’s Grand Vitara and Toyota’s Hyryder, is priced at a slight premium to its competition at the entry level, but offers a substantial cost advantage in the automatic CVT transmission and top-end variants.
Hyundai’s Creta, which leads the segment, is priced starting at ₹10.87 lakh at the entry level and goes up all the way to ₹19.20 lakh at the top end. The Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara, on the other hand, is priced from ₹10.7 lakh to nearly ₹20 lakh at the top end for its strong hybrid variant.
“The mid-sized SUV segment is the most crowded passenger vehicle segment. The size of the segment is about 70,000 units a month, but the volume is spread over 20 different models. So we had to package the Elevate very well, especially since we were introducing an SUV after a long time—the pricing of the product, along with ensuring we are providing safety features, checking off the exterior and expectations customers have in terms of looks, features and drivability. We are trying to ensure that customers should not feel that it is not an accessible car in any way,” said Kunal Behl, vice-president of marketing and sales at Honda Cars India. “Our feedback said customers feel Honda cars are very good to drive, but they are very expensive, so we took that feedback on board when we introduced this pricing.”
“We opened bookings for the Elevate from 1 July and have orders worth five months of production for certain grades even when the price wasn’t shared with customers. In the last week of August, we started dispatching the car to dealers. Today, as we launch, I’m sure we will get a good response,” Behl said, adding, “55% of the bookings we have received are for our top-grade models, and 65% of the bookings are for the CVT automatic. We are the only OEM (original equipment manufacturer) to offer CVT at the starting grades, so customers get a lot of options to choose from. What we believe is we need to ramp up production. From 540 cars a day till March, we have increased production to 660 cars a day, including 25% exports.”
Since discontinuing models like the CR-V and BR-V, Honda has been present only in the sedan segment in India—which represents only 10% of the total passenger vehicle volumes in the country. The market for SUVs more than 4m in length grew 34% in the April-August period in 2023 compared to last year, which makes it a key segment for OEMs wanting to build scale in India to participate in.
Honda Cars India is targeting a growth of 35% in the second half of this year.
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Updated: 05 Sep 2023, 12:20 AM IST
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