After a series of price hike announcements, the country's second-largest carmaker, Hyundai Motor India (HMIL) is the latest auto company to announce a price hike. Hyundai will increase the prices by upto 2 percent across its product line-up, effective from January.
The price hike announced by the company, this year is half the price hike it made last year. Last year, Hyundai had increased the prices across its model range by up to Rs 1 lakh. However, this year the hike will remain up to Rs 50,000, even for the Tuscon – which at present, is the automaker's most expensive model on sale in India. Tuscon is priced at Rs 24.99 lakh (Ex-Showroom) for the top-of-the-line, GLS A/T variant.
In the past few years, cyclical revision in the prices of the products has become a common practice, which was attributed to rise in input cost and undulations in foreign exchange rates. Hyundai has also cited similar reasons. Commenting on the hike, Rakesh Srivastava, Director – Sales & Marketing, said, “We have been absorbing the increase in input and material costs but now are constrained to increase the prices by 2 percent.”
Hyundai stands at second place, in terms of passenger vehicle sales in India and currently has 17 percent of the market share. The company sold 44,008 units in November, witnessing a volume growth of 9.98 percent as compared to the same month, last year. For the period between April and November, Hyundai sales went up by 5.14 percent, where the Company sold 3.58 lakh units, in comparison to the same period, last year.
Hyundai is the eleventh car manufacturer to announce a price hike for 2018 along with, Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, Mahindra, Toyota, Jeep, Renault, Volkswagen, Skoda, Isuzu and Nissan.