New Delhi: Passenger vehicle registrations saw year-on-year growth of 6.5% to 2,74,448 units in August 2022 owing to strong demand, better supply situation and new launches, the data shared by the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (FADA) based VAHAN has confirmed.
According to the dealers’ body report, total vehicle registrations at regional transport offices (RTOs), which are proxies for sales, rose by 8.3% to 15,21,490 units in August 2022.
Manish Raj Singhania, President, FADA, said, “Auto retail in August 2022 saw an overall growth of 8%. August opens the door for festival season to kick in. While Dealers anticipated good Ganesh Chaturthi in August, the results so far have not been encouraging. In spite of good monsoons, the festive season began with a dampener during Ganpati. When compared with August 2019, a pre-covid month, total vehicle retails fell by 7%.”
“While PV outperformed handsomely by growing 41%, CV also turned positive by growing 6% and thus came out of the Covid blues. All the other segments were in red with 2W, 3W and Tractors falling by -16%, -1% and -7% respectively. While the 2W segment has grown by 8.5% YoY, it continues to face Covid blues due to underperformance of Bharat and is still not above 2019 levels. This coupled with price hikes has made the 2W product out of reach for most entry level customers. With erratic monsoon, the crop realisation has been low and flood like situation has restricted customer movement,” he said.
“The 3W space continues its healthy double digit growth (grows 83% YoY) when compared YoY. It has now also equalled 2019 sales for the first time. Electrification is also the highest in this category with eRickshaws leading the way. There is a clear indication that customers are now preferring electric vehicles over ICE vehicles as ICE 3W continues to see double digit de-growth when compared to pre-Covid levels,” Singhania added.
Commercial vehicles
Retail sales for the commercial vehicle segment also witnessed a growth of 24.1% to 67,158 units as against 54,107 units in August 2021.
According to the FADA President, “The CV segment continues to witness an upswing in economic activities post monsoon and saw a growth of 24% YoY. This along with the government’s infrastructure push, new launches by OEMs and better conversion in fleet operations has kept the segment in the green. Apart from this, the Passenger Carrier segment is also showing good demand due to increased buying from educational institutions.”
“The PV segment continues to be on a bull run (grows 6.5% YoY) as demand for all sub categories of vehicles except entry level remained strong. This is also aided by new feature rich launches which OEMs are doing since the past few months. With semi-conductor shortage slowly becoming a passe, vehicle availability has definitely improved but waiting period continues to remain due to high demand in higher feature-rich variants,” he said.
On the outlook, he said that while September brings with itself Onam and Navratri, it also brings the 15-days of Shraadh, generally considered as an inauspicious period for buying vehicles. With easing of supply, the PV segment will definitely see the best ever festivities (Navratri and Diwali) in the past one decade. Along with this, if vehicle prices continue to remain stable and there are no more health-related threats, we may see an uptick in the much awaited 2W space which has not shown the required growth since the previous festivals. With Government’s continuous push in infrastructure spending, we will also see an uptick in the CV space”.
Overall, FADA has changed its stance from ‘cautiously optimistic’ to ‘optimistic’ as it enters the festive period.
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August saw top makers such as Maruti, Hyundai, Mahindra & Mahindra, and Tata Motors report healthy growth in dealer deliveries, though the base was low in some cases as semiconductor shortage had started impacting the industry around August last year.
