Hyundai Plans to Regain Market Share

Small car maket is witnessing a lot of heat this year. Ford Figo is giving nightmares to all other players in the market. And Hyundai is no exception. Hyundai's consistent efforts and products have made sure that the brand attained its niche in the market. But now as the competetion speeds up Hyundai seems to have lost its sleep.

And if Economic Times is to be believed, Hyundai will launch a diesel version of their i10 car soon in order to show the competetors what Hyundai is worth of. After all Hyundai once gave nightmares to every brand from Maruti to Mercedes, here in India. Hyundai Motor India (HMI) MD H W Park said that he wasnt worried because of the to-be launched Nissan Micra but because of the Ford Figo and the new Wagon-R. He hinted at Hyundai's plans of launching a diesel i10 but he didn t comment on the when the car is going to be launched.

If i10 diesel is launched then Hyundai will be able to snatch some customers from both Figo and Ritz diesel. This will increase i10's sales as well as Hyundai's foot hold in the market.

He also said that there still exists demand for their once best selling car, Santro, which manages to sell around 8000 units a month and they dont plan to phase it out anytime soon. “Development of the sub-Santro model is at evaluation stage at Namyang (its R&D centre). We are on schedule as far as the development stage work is concerned,” he said about their sub-Santro category car. “We will launch one new model every year, one face-lifted version and a model year model,” he said regarding their plans. So expect some surprises from the Korean manufacturer soon.

For the i10 diesel we will have to wait until some concrete announcement is made. Once that happens, Hyundai will be able to regain its lost market share.

Hyundai scraps plans for i10 diesel

The i10 from the Hyundai stable is a car that is in the good books of a majority. The firm had plans to introduce a diesel variant for the same which would probably give one more reason for the car to be a favorite. The firm had plans of introducing a 1.1-litre CRDI engine powered variant. However, our friends at Autocar have revealed that Hyundai has scrapped this plan as the diesel engine will have to be manufactured across the national borders, thus making the price of the car soar high.

With the diesel engine being manufactured out of India, the car would cost about Rs 6 lakh which would be utterly meaningless when the i20 diesel variant is available at the same price. However, according to various sources, there might be a diesel engine powered variant in the next generation i10 which is scheduled to be rolled out by 2013. Most probably, the engine should be manufactured in India itself to keep the prices down.