NEW DELHI: With the success of mini SUV Exter and the updated Creta to hit the market soon, the country’s second-largest carmaker Hyundai (HMIL) feels that 65% or about two-thirds of its total passenger vehicle (PV) sales will come from Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) in 2024.
This assumption by the Korean carmaker comes after SUV share in its total sales grew from 53% in 2022 to 60% in 2023. In comparison, SUVs’ contribution in market leader Maruti Suzuki sales increased from 22% in 2022 to 36% in 2023 while almost all of Mahindra & Mahindra’s PV sales were SUVs.
“We feel Hyundai’s SUV share in total sales can grow to 64-65% in 2024 while for the PV industry, SUV contribution can grow to 52% or 53%,” said Tarun Garg, COO, Hyundai Motor India. “There were speculations that growing competition and launch of new Creta would impact demand of the current model. However, Creta remained the segment leader and did extremely well as its sales grew 12% year-on-year in 2024 to over 155,000 units,” said Garg. In total, Hyundai sold over 6 lakh PVs in domestic market last year.
Hyundai is all set to launch the new Creta this month and on Tuesday commenced bookings for a token amount of Rs 25,000. The new model will compete against the likes of recently launched Honda Elevate, Kia Seltos, Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara, Toyota Hyryder, VW Taigun and Skoda Kushaq.
Led by strong demand for SUVs, annual passenger vehicle sales crossed the 40 lakh mark (about 41.08 lakh) for the first time in 2023. SUV segment’s share in total sales increased from 42% in 2022 to nearly 49% in 2023. This is a sharp jump and SUVs contributed only about 20% of total passenger vehicle sales five year back.
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