Effect of traffic on choice of vehicles in India

Once again I have to say Indian cities are crowded and there is a lot of traffic at the office times (morning 7 to 10 AM and evening 5 to 8 PM). Almost 60% of Indian office employees work 6 days a week. Almost all the Government offices and half the corporate offices and most of the small unorganized businesses.

Two wheeler industry

Usually most of the cases people live within 10 km of the office and in city traffic two wheelers are much faster than the car. In small towns which has a radius of about 3-5 km the two wheeler becomes an even more cheaper option. As a result India is worlds largest Two wheeler market. More than 80% of the automobile vehicles on road are Two wheelers. World's top 4 automobile manufacturer's (by sales volume) are predominantly in India. While Japaneese manufacturers did well, European manufacturers kept watching. Apart from Honda all the remaining manufacturers are home grown and now huge. Now when Africa and Latin America market is coming to the expansion mode these manufacturers have huge expansion plan for those markets. 

Low cost fuel efficient cars

High price sensitive customers, high fuel price has given birth of low cost fuel efficient cars. While inspite of the technological superiority and better engine European car manufacturers struggled a lot to succeed. Japanese car manufacturers through their joint ventures made a good fortune in the market but European players mostly stayed at the bay. The discussion of low cost and efficient car can not end without the name of TATA NANO. Though the model disn't succeed, but its definitely a praiseworthy effort.

Commercial transport

Large population and economically poor population has given birth of a bus industry that is very big in size. As on today out of top 5 bus manufacturers in the world apart from Daimler rest 4 are either Indian (Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland) or Chinese. In this sector also European vehicle manufacturers played a mare spectator role. Large road network on one hand boosted this sector at the same time smaller expressway network made the European vehicles extremely inefficient for this market. Expansion of the expressways may be a good sign for them but since this industry depend on service network, European manufacturers have a long way to go in this market. Recently Volvo made a good niche market entry and they are very successful but it is not a mainstream high volume market.

Performance vehicles

When a customer expect a  vehicle to perform they expect speed, Indian road network still lagging behind a lot in this direction. When the speed goes low, fuel efficiency suffers for performance vehicles. To adjust the fuel efficiency for low speed driving conditions the vehicle is no longer a performance vehicle.

Indian market chosen the low speed fuel efficiency market, at  least till now. Its the industry that has to mold into that.