The City has been synonymous with Honda Cars India for the past 25 years, said Takuya Tsumura, President and CEO, during the launch of the City facelift on Thursday.
With India now the brand's biggest market, it becomes the first around the world to get the updated version before it heads out to other Asian markets, he added.
The City gets minor facelift changes including redesigned front and rear bumpers, a new front grille and new alloy wheel design. It now comes with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto along with a wireless charger.
Meanwhile, in line with its global strategy of having two-thirds of sales from EVs including hybrids, Honda has introduced a ‘V’ trim level to the hybrid line up of the City starting at INR 18.89 lakh, ex-showroom.
The company aims at 15% of the new City sales coming from the hybrid models as existing diesel customers are now moving to this space, Kunal Behl, Vice President, Marketing and Sales, told Mobility Outlook. The earlier model contributed to about 8% of the total mix.
While aligning with its global strategy of ‘zero traffic collision fatalities’ by 2050, the company has updated the ‘Honda Sensing’ ADAS features. This sees the addition of lead car departure and low speed follow to the hybrid variants while the other features are also available with the ICE models.
As the fourth generation of the City gets discontinued, the fifth generation ICE variants now get a new base option, ‘SV’, starting at INR 11.49 lakh, ex-showroom.
Road Ahead
According to Behl, Honda has primarily focused on sedans and with this segment now down to 10%, the carmaker has very little to play with. Yet, India remains an important matket even while Honda has had its share of upheavals.
He said the restructuring initiatives have actually helped the company and operations have been profitable in the last two years. Honda is now in a better place and is looking at hiring more people with a larger product portfolio now planned.
With the SUV scheduled to debut in the coming months, the company will ramp up production at its Tapukara plant in Rajasthan from 540 units to 660 units a day. At present, the installed capacity is 1.8 lakh units annually with utilisation levels at 1.3 lakh units. Behl said capacity can be increased to 2.2 lakh units and anything beyond this could spawn other options including recommissioning its Noida plant.
This facility, which was the first for Honda, is now home to manufacture of spares required at dealership. It also has the R&D centre which is working in full swing, he added.
Going forward, the company plans to introduce at least one model per year which will be a mix of new products and facelifts while focusing on the premium market. It has seen growing demand for the top end variants of its current lineup especially CVT going up to 50% while demand for the ZX variant of the Amaze and City touching 60%.
Behl said 40% sales of CVT models is happening in Tier 3 centres and the focus on premium would help rural markets grow too. Along with the model lineup, Honda is also workng on giving a boost to the premium quotient at its dealerships too.
It has already invested INR 100 crore for this exercise with 60% of the work done while another INR 260 crore has been earmarked for revamping the balance 40% of the dealerships, he added.
Honda will also focus on ICE, hybrids and EVs for the Indian market in the near term. According to Behl, the global alliance with General Motors for batteries could even help the Indian arm in launching EVs. He said hydrogen was not on the cards anytime soon.
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