Thanks to the ever increasing popularity of the Toyota Innova Crysta, India is now among Toyota Motor’s top 10 markets globally. Toyota registered a 9% increase in sales in the past year with a total of 1,51,000 units sold as compared to the industry’s average of 5.5%
Masakazu Yoshimura, who recently took over as Managing Director at Toyota Kirloskar, is also of the opinion that India could become the third largest auto market in the coming decade. That is a tall claim, if you consider the fact that Toyota does not have any mass market product in India.
But if you look closely, the reason behind this claims could be the Suzuki-Toyota partnership. Thanks to this, Toyota will be selling rebadged Maruti Brezza and Baleno in India. Both these cars together, currently generate about 30,000 unit sales for Maruti every month. Toyota has plans to launch the rebadged Baleno this year, and the rebadged Brezza next year.
Thanks to the addition of these two rebadged Maruti cars, if Toyota manages to add about 10k units a month to their sales, they could in fact become one of the top 3 car brands in India as early as 2021-22. Currently, the top 3 car makers in India are Maruti, Hyundai and Mahindra, which is closely followed by Tata Motors. Below is a detailed look at 2018 sales of car brands in India.
The recent tie up with Suzuki will allow Toyota Motors to offer products in the mid size product segment and cater to the demands of the sub Rs.10 lakh market with a range of products along with more emphasis on localization and other cost cutting factors. The new Baleno based hatchback, set for launch later this year is among the first vehicle to be introduced as a part of this association.
At the same time, Toyota will continue to offer their cars and update them in timely manner to meet customer demands. Recently, Toyota launched the new Camry hybrid in India at Rs.36.96 lakhs. This self charging electric car shows off the company’s plans for a cleaner and greener environment. The new generation Camry is powered by a 2.5 liter petrol engine mated with an electric motor offering fuel efficiency of 23.27 kmpl.
It sports the fourth generation hybrid system with advanced nickel metal hydride batteries. It gets 9 airbags and impact sensing fuel cut off along with brake hold functions. The Camry Hybrid is being produced at the company’s Bengaluru based facility which has the capacity to roll out 125 Camry Hybrids each month.
