Yes, there isn’t any official data or information shared by the manufacturers’ on the total number of cars, two-wheelers or the pricier commercial vehicles available with the companies yet, as retail sales have turned to a trickle.
So now the industry is groping in the dark over the next week as the deadline approaches and there’s no respite. The dealers are the worst lot as they’ll be the biggest loser in the entire value chain in terms of financial and overhead losses.
Companies remain silent on their inventory woes, but there’s stock estimated worth over Rs 6,000 crore lying unsold with their dealers.~
Companies remain silent on their inventory woes, but there’s stock estimated worth over Rs 6,000 crore lying unsold with their dealers. Retailers have tried to raise an alarm regularly and their last plea coming up in the Supreme Court on Friday failed to evoke an expected response. But few read their woes. Financial and compounding to their potential customers.
In a petition filed in the Supreme Court the auto dealers’ national body Federation of Automobile Dealers’ Association, or FADA, stated that there are 7,00,000 two-wheelers lying unsold throughout India, along with 15,000 PV’s and another 12,000 commercial vehicles. Besides, another 1.05 lakh two-wheelers, 2,250 cars and around 2,000 CVs though sold, are yet to complete transactions via their registration at the transport offices throughout India.
Also, dealers’ woes are not going to end as governments in the centre and states battle on the coronavirus front, grappling with half-baked information and statistics to frame strategies to scramble up desperate measures to contain the spread. The latest of 21-day countrywide lockout submerges all hopes of the industry.
Most companies are now scared of rollover vehicles as all big markets including Delhi-NCR and Mumbai-Maharashtra constituting almost 40 percent of new vehicles sales across India, lie abruptly shut.~
In such a scenario there’s isn’t much the auto community can expect much as the deadline approaches. March 31 isn’t far. Next Tuesday. So that’s not far. While a clear order from the Supreme Court allowing only 10 percent of the residual BS-IV stock to be sold after the lockdown deadline leaves the majority of this inventory unsold, as there will be no extra timelines.
Largely, it’s only the passenger car segment leader Maruti Suzuki and the premium bikemaker Royal Enfield along with Bharat Benz, the commercial vehicle subsidiary of Daimler AG, claiming to have exhausted their older almost-irrelevant BS-IV inventory at least ex-factory in their operational chain.
Others haven’t come forward to share their stock. There would be many brands reeling under the woes of BS-IV stock and many of these would be European, Japanese and the American. Be it Nissan, Ford Motor, Volkswagen, Tata Motors, Hero MotoCorp, Bajaj Auto or even smaller players like Yamaha Motor all their dealers carry the inventory skeleton in their backyards.
Most companies are now scared of rollover vehicles as all big markets including Delhi-NCR and Mumbai-Maharashtra constituting almost 40 percent of new vehicles sales across India, lie abruptly shut.
And there isn’t any other solution in sight, either. Most players are clueless. Be it manufacturers, transporters, dealers or even the last-mile state-led RTO’s, who carry the ultimate burden of ending miseries of the customers in terms of seamless ownership.
In the entire melee there’s hardly the customer in sight. He who spends all the money to buy these expensive pieces of machines, sometimes burdened by a heavy loan and then there is the lockdown. The entire legacy of today’s uncertainty makes owning a vehicle a harrowing experience, as of now. Not to mention the shrinking lifecycle of vehicles and the incessant rise in prices. And the scary rides in public transport means amid these times of fast spreading coronavirus is not something masses can afford in the current situation. So the reliance on private vehicles is only set to intensify.
For an industry that has shrunk by almost 15 percent in the current fiscal hasn’t got any stimulus or incentives from the government or any of its departments. There won’t be any direct respite from the RBI’s interim measures to the automobile industry. It’s only a big cheer to the customer who still laps up new purchases and takes the discretion to spend its hard-earned money on new vehicles that are losing both sheen and residual value.
It’s time we think about the customers, who would keep the critical automobile industry going from strength to strength, notwithstanding the pandemic of corona or even more miseries stored in the future.
