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Manu P. Toms

Mumbai, Sept 9 Toyota is looking at bringing in its vehicle-financing arm, Toyota Financial Services, to India in its bid to boost market share .

“We are considering this option among various other marketing initiatives. We have sent a proposal to the Toyota headquarters in Japan a few months ago. The final decision has to come from there,” a top company official told Business Line. “We are not seeing any impediment in terms of government approval. The immediate challenge will be in setting up infrastructure and network,” said the company official.

Currently, 30-40 per cent of the Toyota vehicles sold in India are self-financed by the customers while about 60 per cent of the purchases are being financed by banks including ICICI, HDFC and various other financial agencies.

The CNG variant of the multi-utility vehicle (MUV) Innova is in the final stage of development while viability study on CNG version of Corolla is going on. “We are running the pilot project of CNG-run Innova. The testing is going on,” Mr Sandeep Singh, Deputy Managing Director (Marketing), Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd, told Business Line.

“Since we offer one lakh kilometre warranty on all our vehicles we cannot rush to the market with the product. We want to ensure that the product complies with our quality standards,” said Mr B. Ashish Kumar, General Manager, Marketing TKM, when asked why testing takes so much time.

The sources said that company is in talks with three Italian kitmakers for the supply of CNG kits for its vehicles. However, company thinks that lack of infrastructure poses a challenge in ensuring the commercial success of such vehicles. “CNG is available only in Delhi, Mumbai and Gujarat. Our CNG initiative will go along with the infrastructure development in terms of fuel filling stations,” said Mr Singh.

Toyota is looking for government incentives for hybrid cars as it plans to introduce Toyota Prius. However, the company officials said that they would not wait till the government declares tax incentives for green vehicles.

“We would like to see if the government brings in any incentives for hybrid vehicles. The 110 per cent import tax makes them very expensive,” said Mr Yugo Miyamoto, Senior Executive Co-ordinator, Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd. He added that lack of government support would not deter the company’s plan to launch Toyota Prius in India.

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