Lexus nx crossover

Ishii said that the company sees a lot of opportunity in the Indian car market now. This is because the company can witness that the three German luxury brands are doing quite well in India. He added that he feels that the company really needs to bring in the Lexus here. Ishii also pointed out that in the luxury car segment in India, the company wishes to be different than that of the major German players.

Despite the consistent decline in the new car sales in India over the last two years, the luxury car segment is the only one that has seen considerable growth in India, with a healthy margin of 30,000 to 40,000 vehicles per year. Needless to say, that the major chunk of this sales growth was witnessed by the three German luxury car behemoths, namely Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi. As the German luxury trio is doing well in the Indian luxury car segment, the world’s largest car maker, the Japanese Toyota Motor thinks that the Indian auto market is mature enough to launch its very own luxury brand Lexus.

Toyota Kirloskar’s maximum sales numbers are currently coming from its Etios sedan and the Etios Liva hatchback. However, Mr. Ishii said that the company is not happy with the overall volume and is now planning to expand its footprint to the tier 2 and 3 non-metro cities of India to reach out to a larger group of customers.

The company has recently launched a new member in the Etios series in the form of the Etios Cross, and has also launched the all new 2014 Corolla sedan. Both the cars have launched in India last month and are receiving good amounts of bookings.

The very muscular and trendy looking Etios Cross is a beefed-up version of the Etios Liva hatchback, and is expected to be a good seller. Priced at Rs. 5.76 lakhs, the Etios Cross is competing with the likes of Volkswagen Polo Cross. On the other hand, the 2014 Toyota Corolla is expected to boost the company’s sales considerably. The 11^th generation sedan model comes with a new bold visual appeal, stylized and sharp front fascia, enhanced interiors and better ride and handling features. These two new cars from Toyota Kirloskar are expected to give satisfactory sales rates this year after a long sales slump.

As for the introduction of the Lexus in India, Toyota Kirloskar may bring it sooner than later considering that it has already announced that it will only focus on the bigger and more expensive cars.

In India Toyota Kirloskar Motor will manufacture cars centered on smaller MPV’s and SUV’s and is also developing new variants for the Etios brands by 2014-2015. The company is confident of making higher profits with MPV’s and SUV’s.  Toyota will expand their cars units to semi-urban areas and smaller towns, which is gaining popularity in these areas. The new UV may hinder sales of a more successful model Innova, but the company is not too concerned because the sale hindrance might be only 5-10%.

Toyota has announced that there will not be production of any new car for the next three years. The company is now strongly focusing on developing the Toyota Etios twin cars. The company also stressed upon not releasing the Lexus brand for more than two years.

The company earlier stated that they would introduce the Lexus brand in India, but has later changed their minds because of the increase in customs duty of luxury vehicles in the last financial year and also the depleting economic value of Indian currency.

Mr. Sandeep Singh, deputy managing director for marketing said ‘’ we were keen to introduce the Lexus brand to India, but the decision was put on hold because of higher custom duty and depreciating Indian rupee.’’ He also said that the Lexus brand will not operate in the country for the next two years.

Launching Lexus car will make CBU’s turn their backs on launch because of the high cost of constructing luxury vehicles, with other luxury vehicles pushing their entry limit into the market. The company has also postponed the launch of the amazing looking Prius for similar higher customs duty reasons.

The company is also keen on enhancing their dealer networks across the country. They have increased their dealer network to 195, which will soon hit the 200 mark at the end of this year with an additional 30 by the end of March 2013. The company did not meet the required profit sales during November this year, but there was good sales profit between January to November 2012 at 161,000 units which is expected to cross the 170,000 to 172,000 mark by the end of next year.

Toyota cars have received good profit in India during the January to November 2012 period. Toyota cars are very popular in India, which can be observed by the number of Toyota cars running on Indian roads. It may be a wise decision of the company to focus on the already existing Toyota cars and upgrade their standards. This way the company can make profits on the present cars to a large extent than focus on introducing new cars to India.