India’s growing Sub Compact & Midsized SUV’s Culture.

SUVs are the new aspirational Indian car.

SUVs have been considered a greatly aspirational type of vehicles because of their high price a few years ago, which made their owners limited to only the upper-class and elite like actors, politicians and industrialists. The advent of the Compact & Mid Size SUVs, a more affordable option of these vehicles, has helped many mainstream buyers afford them and led to the fastest-ever development of this car segment.

Most of the cities are filled with bad roads. So buying a car with higher ground clearance to take you through potholes and mud makes sense.

According to the market survey, an average Indian car buyer loves SUVs. Be it for the commanding seating position or the road presence, we Indians are buying more and more utility vehicles.

Sub Compact SUV:
The subcompact SUV segment is one of the most competitive segments in the industry. Automakers are increasingly looking at offering vehicles which have SUV-like appearance and for easy manoeuvrable in traffic. Add factors like affordability and features, and the products become extremely a good deal for even first-time buyers or those looking at upgrading from a small car. With Suzuki Vitara Breeza, Hyundai Venue, Tata Nexon, Ford EcoSport, Renault Duster, Mahindra Xuv 300, and with more and more carmakers are looking to strengthen their position in the segment.

Mid Size SUV:
The Mid Size SUV segment is one of the most competitive segments in the industry. Bridging the gap between full-size SUVs and compact SUVs are the newly segmented mid-size SUVs. SUVs longer than 4 metres and smaller than full-blown mud plugging machines like the Toyota Fortuner and the Ford Endeavour can be slotted into this category. With the Jeep Compass, MG Hector, Kia Seltos, New Hyundai Creta and the Tata Harrier this segment too is on fire.

Origin:

It all started with the Renault Duster, Nissan Terrano and Ford Ecosport launched in 2012-2013.

What Renault, Nissan & ford did was, offer a product which the Indian market wanted. 

XUV500 compact SUV First launched in 2011, Over the years, the SUV has garnered a lot of accolades and popularity among enthusiasts and critics alike for its design and feature list. The XUV500 received its mid-life update in 2015, which further increased the premium quotient of the SUV.

Time for the Market Leaders:

It was in 2015 when we first saw the arrival of the Hyundai Creta in India. With multiple engine options mated to both automatic and manual gearboxes, there is a Creta for all types of buyers. The Hyundai Creta’s success story continued over months and years and has been a runaway success for Hyundai. 

In the year 2016 Suzuki Vitara Brezza took India’s SUV love a step ahead. It was the segment leader in terms of sales. It looked like a proper SUV, it had a great set of features, it offered good space and a decent powertrain and most of all it was a Maruti.

Mahindra, in comparison, has largely struggled to find enough buyers for the four compact SUV models: TUV 300, KUV 100, Quanto and Nuvo Sport.

In the year 2017:

Jeep Launched its first made in India product Compass as a mid-size Suv. Initially, because of its refined engine, macho stances and Jeep Compass became the one highest-selling premium compact SUV in India beating XUV500. But later it didn’t withstand the competition from its rivals Tata Harrier, MG Hector Kia Seltos and newly Updated Creta.

Tata Launched NEXON. The Tata Nexon holds the pride of being the first made-in-India vehicle to score 5 stars in the Global NCAP tests.

Renault Captur launched in 2017. But the SUV has not been as popular as some of the other Renault products like the Duster.

2019- Year of Blockbusters:

The year started with the launch of Tata’s Harrier. The Harrier is also a landmark product, being the first model built on Tata’s new OMEGA Arc platform that’s derived from Land Rover’s D8 platform. In fact, the Harrier is the first new Tata built with subsidiary Land Rover’s know-how from the get-go. 

Few days after the launch of Tata Harrier,  Nissan launched Kicks. It failed to create a mark in its segment.

Mahindra tried to give competition to Suzuki Vitara Brezza with the XUV300 but, has met with limited success. 

Like Tata Nexon it also got 5 star safety rating at NCAP crash test.

Hyundai’s launched a sub 4m car, the Venue competitor to Vitara Breeza & XUV 300 has become a new segment favourite. 

Later in a few months, India witnessed a pair of new entrants debuting Indian automobile world. KIA launched Seltos and MG(Morris Garages) launched Hector, in the month of Jul-Aug in 2019. Both these care are placed under the mid-sized SUV segment. Feature-packed, catchy design, state of art technologies. 

They are launched when the Indian automobile sector is going through a rough phase. Yet KIA and MG managed to clinch an attractive Sales figures in the first month of their launch. 

India’s SUV love has further boosted by the launch of the country’s most affordable electric SUV, the Tata Nexon EV. MG’s premium electric SUV ZS EV & Hyundai’s Kona Electric.

Present (2020) to future Road Map :

Hyundai launched its New Updated Creta in March. While subsequent weeks saw the country going into lockdown to check the spread of Covid-19 and it had a severe impact on overall car sales.

Volkswagen & Skoda Launched T-Roc & Koraq. To compete with the Mid Size Suv Segment.

In Coming Months we can expect to see a few cars launches in the segment like :

Kia Sonet, Nissan Magnite, Renault Kiger& Toyota Urban Cruiser(Rebadged Vitara Breeza) to rival the sub-4-metre Segment. 

Jeep has confirmed its plan to launch a sub-4 metre SUV next year. (2021) 

Volkswagen Group is gearing up to introduce the VW Taigun and the Skoda Vision IN sub-4 metre by next year. (2021)

Pic Courtesy:  

Renault Duster, Nissan Terrano and Ford Ecosport @Motorbeam

Hyundai Creta & Suzuki Vitara Breeza @CarandBike

XUV300 & Venue @CarDekho

Seltos & Hector @CarDekho

Nexon EV, Kona EV,ZS EV @gaadiwaadi

Karoq & TRoc @gaadiwaadi

Vision IN & Taigun @Gomechanic