Automatics Growing In Popularity In India

With a market for nearly every possible kind of vehicle that the industry offers, India is both a challenging and an interesting market for automobile manufacturers. We buy hatchbacks that are as simple as the Tata Nano or as extravagant as the Volkswagen Polo GT TSI. But customers have always been hesitant about purchasing a car with an automatic transmission (AT). This was based on two very important aspects that a customer in India keeps a check on: the overall price of the car and the fuel-economy figures. Cars with automatic gearboxes never really matched the ones equipped with an old-school manual transmission in either of those aspects.

Now, with traffic woes getting out of control, India has slowly started leaning towards the convenience of automatic gearboxes. The new-age automatics are just as fuel-efficient and a lot more affordable, thanks to a very competitive automotive market. These reasons accounted for a two-fold jump in the number of vehicles sold with an automated gearbox in 2015, compared to the preceding year. Last year, 7 per cent of all new cars purchased had an expensive automatic transmission installed. Out of all Hyundai Creta models sold till date, 20 per cent were automatics. CVT (continuously variable transmission) variants of the Honda City and the Honda Jazz accounted for 23 per cent of the overall car sales. This means that nearly one car out of every four petrol cars sold by the Japanese carmaker was an automatic. The newly launched Toyota Innova Crysta has a similar story, with half the units sold so far are automatics.

AMT (automated manual transmission) was introduced for mainstream cars by various manufacturers for customers who wanted the convenience of an automatic gearbox but couldn't afford to shell out the extra money that cars with conventional automatics fetch. Maruti Suzuki, India's largest car manufacturer, sells variants of the Alto K10, Celerio, WagonR and DZire with an AMT option. In terms of sales figures, 44 per cent of Celerios sold were equipped with AMTs. For WagonR and Alto K10, 20 per cent of overall sales were with the AMTs. Towards the premium segment, the Baleno is sold with a CVT option. The more expensive variants of the Ertiga and the Ciaz have the option of a conventional AT to choose from. Put together, Maruti Suzuki sold 56,000 automatic cars in India in the financial year 2015-16, a figure that increased by 24,000 units from the preceding year.

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We see a similar trend even over a longer period. For Toyota, 35 per cent of the Fortuners sold in 2012 were automatics. Now, the figure has risen to 50 per cent for the SUV. The Corolla Altis's automatic sales jumped from 25 per cent to 50 per cent over the same four-year period.

India still is far behind countries like the US, where nearly 80 per cent of all cars sold are automatics. With continuous improvement in technology and infrastructure, India will surely move closer to better sales figures for automatics.