India’s Free Trade Agreements (FTA) with other countries will not impact prices of luxury cars in India, according to Mercedes-Benz India.
The German luxury carmaker stated that across automakers operating the country, luxury cars are majorly manufactured in India.
“We have always encouraged free trade. We are looking forward to the EU-India FTA and even the India-UK FTA; they surely drive the economic growth of the country, for the segments. As a large multinational operating in multiple geographies, we have always advocated free trade and we continue to do that. There are expectations that the prices may come down for luxury cars once the FTA sets in,” Santosh Iyer, Managing Director and CEO of Mercedes-Benz India told businessline.
“However, I would like to point out that it is not possible because today 90-95 per cent of the cars that we sell in India are locally produced. It is only the 5 per cent completely built units (CBUs) which may have some changes but with the exchange rates that we are operating, it is not going to be a significant change even if the FTA comes in. For companies like us and other luxury car markets operating in India there will not be any change in pricing,” he added.
Initially experts had pointed out that prices of luxury cars in the country would reduce with FTA agreements being done.
AMG & GT 63 PRO
The company launched AMG GT 63 4MATIC+ and ‘GT 63 PRO’ in India priced at ₹3 crore and ₹3.6 crore, respectively.
“Our customers have picked it up. We also have customers who take the cars to the track. There are customers who are building their own tracks so that they can enjoy cars and drive on them. The practicality of an AMG is that it is not only as good on the track, but also quite good on Indian roads. We can see a lot of adoption there for some of these track cars,” he said.
The company sells 25 per cent of its luxury vehicles in the top-end vehicle segment. Further, it has seen a growth in luxury electric vehicles by 73 per cent between January and May.