India's craze for SUVs: There's more to it than meets the eye
sports utility vehicles, which were once the vehicles of choice for offroaders but have now evolved to urban vehicles. So much so, even office-goers prefer SUVs to hatchbacks or sedans.
The new SUVs, which include the so-called compact SUVs, may have shed much of the functionality of SUVs proper but the form is driving the concept.
But the fall in sales of small cars and the rise in SUV sales may not be only due to Indians now ditching small cars and preferring to buy SUVs. Due to several factors, carmakers are focusing more on SUVs, making them affordable even if they have to downsize them in different respects, just as small-car segment crumbles under stress.
The sale spike
Suddenly, more Indians are buying SUVs than hatchbacks and sedans, something not foreseen a few years ago in a market defined by small cars. SUVs now make up half of all passenger vehicle sales in India, doubling their market share in five years, ET has reported.
As much as 52% of the 363,733 passenger vehicles sold in September were SUVs, a record for a month, increasing their market share from about 43.6% in September 2022, a nearly 20% spike.
SUV sales have grown to comprise 48.3% of total vehicle sales in the first six months of this fiscal year, up from 41.5% in H1FY23.
The share of hatchbacks has slipped to 30% in H1FY24 from 35.1% in the same period last fiscal. Despite launches of several new models such as Hyundai Verna, Volkswagen Virtus and Skoda Slavia, the share of sedans, too, declined to 9.3% in the fiscal first half from 10.3% in H1FY23.
SUVs have seen a four-fold increase in their share among first-time buyers in the country over the past decade as a growing number of Indians flocked to the four-wheelers with higher ground
