After the recent hike in the petrol price by Rs. 7.50 per litre announced on 23 May 2012 which is creating a lot of resistance from the whole country has created a wave of unrest among the industry, public and many political parties as well. To keep the already low petrol car sales to get even worse, car makers have started taking counter measures. Among the first to announce incentives is Hyundai India which has gone ahead and announced a Petrol Price Lock Assurance program. They informed the same to us by official price release which does not detail on how exactly they will benefit the customers, but we assume that they will be providing the discount or some monetary incentive to their customers on the purchase of a Hyundai Petrol car for next 7 months based on some reasonable distance per month and the mileage of the Hyundai petrol car being purchased.
This special offer is valid on the following cars on their petrol variants in India – Hyundai Eon, Hyundai Santro, Hyundai i10, Hyundai i20, Hyundai Accent and Hyundai Verna. This scheme will offer benefits over and above the already running Hyundai 5 Star Assurance program running on Hyundai Santro and Hyundai i10 which was announced on 8th May 2012. This does provide some relief from the horrible petrol price increase to the customers who are looking for affordable small cars but don’t have the budget for a diesel car.
We expect more such offers by other car manufacturers as well to promote the sales of their petrol cars in India. The already falling demand for petrol cars will drop further because of recent price hike and will create lot of pressure on large car makers like Maruti and Hyundai who do not have any small car with diesel engine in their portfolio. The demand for diesel cars is already high and is expected to be higher in the future as well. Maruti Suzuki has already announced an investment of about Rs. 2000 Crore to develop their diesel engine plant while Hyundai India also has plans to produce their diesel engines in India rather than importing them from Korea.
But the bigger question is what will happen when the diesel prices are regulated? It may happen by end of 2012 as it is under consideration for long time and govt. may pull the plug of diesel subsidies in future which will further pressurize the auto industry and dig deeper holes in the pockets of car buyers. We have already done an analysis on the same here – Is Diesel Car A Good Choice Over Petrol Car?