Maruti Suzuki hopes to deliver more cars to customers this festive season

Maruti Suzuki expects it to continue to grow faster than the domestic passenger car industry on the back of strong demand for its models and especially its SUV range, according to a senior company executive.

The automaker expects the overall passenger car market to grow in the range of 5-7 percent in the current fiscal year.

In an interaction with PTI, Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Chief Executive Officer (Marketing & Sales) Shashank Srivastava said that the current financial PV industry is expected to close at 40.5-41.3 lakh.

“We have not revised our estimates which we made at the beginning of the year. We said that the growth of the industry will be in the range of 5-7 percent and our growth should be higher than the industry,” Srivastava said.

He noted that in the first quarter, the company grew by 12.2 percent while the industry grew by about 9.5 percent.

Srivastava said demand remains fairly strong so far in the financial year with the April-June period turning out to be the best quarter ever for the industry.

“We think as we go forward while volumes may hold because bookings remain strong, growth may be weak and the reason for that is because the underlying effect may be coming into play now,” he said.

He said last year in the second quarter, sales reached 10.2 lakh units which was the highest quarter in the history of PVs.

“Therefore, significantly higher growth may be unreasonable to expect,” Srivastava said.

When asked about the company’s preparations for the upcoming holiday season, he noted that as the semiconductor shortage recedes, the automaker aims to boost production and significantly reduce the waiting period on models like the Ertiga, Brezza, and XL6.

MSI currently has a pending reservation lag of around 3.62 lakh units.

“In the second quarter, we expect the shortage of semiconductors to be relatively less, therefore, we will be able to produce these models and hopefully we can reduce the waiting period for customers,” Srivastava said.

On the company’s plans regarding the introduction of more hybrid models, he said, “It will be significant as we said that by 2030, the approximate split will be 15 percent electric, 25 percent hybrid, and 60 percent CNG, biogas, ethanol, blended gasoline, etc. that “

He added that the company currently only has two hybrid models in its portfolio and the number is expected to rise in the future.

“We will not be able to give the exact number of models that will appear but the percentages indicate something like (model number to be increased),” said Srivastava.

He noted that CNG along with this year’s hybrid sales should match the company’s diesel sales peak of 4.8 liters in 2017-18.