Customers have to shell out more to buy Maruti Suzuki cars as the country’s largest carmaker has hiked prices of its vehicles across all models, except the latest version of Ertiga, by up to Rs 10,000. The auto major stated that it increased the prices due to higher commodity costs and adverse foreign exchange situation.
“Maruti Suzuki India on Thursday announced a price change for select models owing to the increase in commodity prices and foreign exchange rates, etc,” the automaker said in a statement. The revised prices will come into effect from January 10, 2019.
To recap, in December 2018, the company had mentioned it would raise prices across various car models in January to mitigate the impact of high commodity prices and foreign exchange rates. However, the company didn’t divulge any information regarding the quantum of increase.
Earlier, Tata Motors raised prices by up to Rs 40,000 from January 1, 2019, citing rising input costs. At present, Tata Motors sells a range of vehicles starting from the entry-level Nano to premium Hexa sports utility vehicle (SUV) priced between Rs 2.36 lakh and Rs 17.97 lakh.
Toyota Kirloskar Motor, the local unit of Japan’s Toyota Motor, said it has increased prices by up to 4 percent from January 1. Ford India, too, has raised prices across its portfolio in the range of 1-3 percent. “Prices of Ford India’s vehicles were increased between 1 percent and 3 percent on January 1, 2019. The price change was necessitated by rising input costs and fluctuations in exchange rate,” according to ET which cited Ford India statement.
It may be noted that passenger vehicle sales in the country dropped year-on-year for three months through September, before growing 1.55 percent in October. In November, too, passenger vehicle sales had dipped by 3.43 percent to 266,000 units, as per the ET report.
In other news, Maruti Suzuki has released an official teaser for the approaching new generation Maruti Suzuki WagonR. It also does a good job of acting on a number of its flaws like safety, more powerful engines and looks.