German luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz expects 2022 to be its best year yet in India, surpassing previous best sales of 15,500 cars in 2018, driven by strong demand and a slew of new products to be introduced during the current year, a senior company official said.
“What gives me the confidence is that on the one hand I see extremely strong demand.We sold over 4,000 units in the first quarter and have an order book of about 5,000 cars,” Martin Schwenk, Managing Director & CEO, Mercedes-Benz India, told The Hindu. “This is largely because of two reasons viz. one is we have extremely strong products and very new products, and the other is that there is a positive business climate. A lot of our customers are from business areas.”
He added that the only challenge is to produce the cars due to various uncertainties such as part shortage and logistic issues. “We have a strong link between sales, production and logistics functions now in our company which enables us to some level to limit the problems, but they are there...and they will remain with us for the next three-six months, even longer.
“I think we will have to live with it but still healthy demand, strong products and hopefully a capable management which manage the shortage...we should be able to get there,” he said.
The luxury carmaker, which on Tuesday introduced the new generation C-Class in India with prices in the range of ₹55 lakh and ₹61 lakh (ex-showroom), currently has waiting period ranging from two to eight months, depending on the models.
“C Class is a very strong product. E Class is our strongest sedan, but C class is the second largest in our Sedan portfolio. About 48% of C-class buyers are first-time entrants to luxury car segment so it is important for us,” Mr. Schwenk added.
Asked if the increased levels of localisation will help with shortage and logistics issues, he said that Mercedes Benz builds very complex cars and is not feasible to have such a high level of localisation that that the company would be shielded from uncertainties, especially at these volumes. “If we had very high volumes and specific India products only... but that's not the case. The components are coming from all over the world. Its technically not feasible to decouple from the supply.”
He added that while this year may be the best one for Mercedes, it may not be the case for overall luxury market. “We believe that for luxury market itself to come back, it needs maybe a few more months and it wouldn’t happen entirely this year but at the same time we expect that the luxury market should have, over the next years, higher growth rates than we see in the overall passenger car market but it will not explode...the shift in consumer behaviour will continue but these trends also take years to develop.”
---
