Hyundai and Toyota ready with yet another car price hike

The Indian auto industry is gearing-up for yet another price hike as many of its major car makers have already announced the prospective price hike of their respective portfolio cars in the Indian market. Going on the same line, the second largest car maker of the country, Hyundai Motors announced on Thursday that it is going to increase the price of its cars in the country by up to 1.2% from next month. The company has blamed the rising input costs and shrinking margins for this price hike. After the implementation, where the price of company's popular small cars like Hyundai i10 is expected to go up by about Rs 3,000, the premium range cars like Hyundai Sonata Transform will become dearer by about Rs 10,000.

According to Mr Arvind Saxena, director (Marketing & Sales) at Hyundai Motor India, the company has tried to absorb as much of the cost as it could, but there has been consistent increase in the commodity prices that forced it to pass some of it to the customers. Meanwhile, the largest car maker of the country, Maruti Suzuki India limited has already increased the price of its cars in India by up to 1.5 percent starting from this month. However, the price of its best-selling car Maruti Alto has been kept unchanged.

On the other hand, Japanese car maker Toyota Motors has already said that it is mulling over to revise the price of all of its vehicles across segments from October 2010. At present, the company sells some of the most popular cars in the Indian market including Crossover Innova, Luxury SUV Fortuner and Premium sedan Corolla Altis. According to Mr Sandeep Singh, deputy MD (marketing) at TKM, Input cost pressure is very high and the fluctuation in Yen is also affecting the company. He added that the company will review the prices of its products in October.

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