The global recession will definitely impact the Indian market, yet the market will grow in 2023 over 2022 because of the pending orders, Masakazu Yoshimura, MD & CEO, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, said during the sidelines of the Auto Expo 2023. The estimated backlog of the industry for 2022 is about 700,000 cars, and of these Toyota itself has pending orders of about 90,000 cars. “These orders will need to be fulfilled in 2023 and that will boost sales numbers,” he told Vikram Chaudhary. Edited excerpts:
Toyota reached highest ever sales in India in 2022, and one of the reasons was more models on sale thanks to model sharing with your alliance partner (Suzuki). But how many first-time Toyota buyers did you attract last year?
We attracted a substantial number of all-new Toyota buyers, but we don’t follow figures as much as we follow customer satisfaction. For instance, according to a study by Forrester, Toyota provides the best car purchase and service experience in India. While we got a substantial number of customers, we are not satisfied yet, and the reason is we are yet to meet the customer demand.
What is the number of pending orders?
It’s about 90,000 units. That is more or less the yearly volume for us.
You discontinued the Urban Cruiser and stopped taking orders of the diesel Innova Crysta last year. Was that because you couldn’t fulfil the orders?
We stopped taking orders of the diesel Innova Crysta primarily because of the semiconductor shortage. But we had to discontinue the Urban Cruiser because we’ve seen that traditionally we get more traction with slightly bigger cars instead of small cars (the Urban Cruiser was a sub-4 metre compact SUV). We’ve instead seen very good traction for the Urban Cruiser Hyryder, a bigger SUV.
Will the Innova will be launched in diesel again? And if yes, will that be for the fleet segment or for all buyers?
We never discontinued the diesel Innova Crysta. We just stopped taking orders because of the semiconductor shortage.
Do you think the global recession will impact the Indian auto market?
It will definitely impact the market, and yet the Indian market will grow in 2023 over 2022. The biggest reason for that is we have a huge backorder of 2022 that will need to be fulfilled in 2023. The good thing is that the semiconductor shortage is easing.
Your alliance partner sells more units per month of the Grand Vitara than you sell the Urban Cruiser Hyryder (both are same cars with different badges). Is it because your alliance partner has more showrooms?
They are much larger than us, larger in history, larger in size, in dealerships. That obviously makes an impact on sales.
Will you keep focusing more on the strong hybrid segment instead of pure electric cars?
I believe that the solution is not A or B, it is A and B and C and so on. Instead of focusing only on electric cars, we will focus on hybrids and flex fuels and ethanol and every possible technology.
In fact, flex fuel vehicles mated with hybrid technology massively reduces carbon emissions compared to conventional cars.
What is your take on the six-airbag rule?
It’s a very good idea. We welcome this, even though it will be a major engineering challenge for manufacturers (and especially suppliers).
