The brand Volvo has been there in the Indian automobile market for quite sometime now but the car department is something they’ve not been known for. They’ve been known for the luxury buses they’ve been putting on the Indian roads and to some extent, they’ve been quite successful at that. When you say you have to board a deluxe bus, you say you are going to board a Volvo. Such is the impact that every deluxe bus on our roads is believed to be a Volvo.
Now the Swedish carmaker as been struggling in the Indian market for quite some time now with none of its cars being able to make an impact on the luxury market. This has been mainly due to the higher prices they are sold it since they are brought in as CBUs in India when the competition such as the German brotherhood is increasing their CKDs in India every year. Now Volvo is looking to follow the same route in a bid to gain a chunk of the Indian luxury car market.
Mr. Thomas Ernburg, MD, Volvo Auto India has stated, “It makes sense to set up a car manufacturing facility in India as we target sales of 20,000 units by 2020 here. A group within Volvo is conducting feasibility report of setting up a facility in emerging economies including India.” This pretty much means that once the assembly line(if set up in India) will bring down the prices of the Volvo cars considerably and will reduce the after sales costs too.
Volvo plans to launch their V40 crossover in India by March-April in 2013 and this will be the least priced Volvo in the country. Volvo had introduced cut-price variants of all their models recently which even though managed to bring in more sales than before, but yet appeared to be quite the minion compared to what the Germans sell. The Volvo cars still remain the safest cars that money can buy and if the prices come down, the safest cars might just become the best-sellers too.
Source- Rediff
