The auto industry in November has clocked the highest retail sales in history on year-on-year (YoY) basis. The total vehicle retail has grown 26 per cent with all the categories in the industry closing in green, as robust registrations across segments including passenger vehicles, two-wheelers and commercial vehicles took place during the month..

PV, CV sales

According to the monthly retail sales data shared by Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) on Friday, sales of passenger vehicle grew by 21 per cent y-o-y to 3,00,922 units during the month, as compared with 2,48,052 units in the corresponding month last year.

The commercial vehicle sales grew by 33 per cent y-o-y to 79,369 units in last month as compared with 59,765 units in November 2021.

2-wheeler, 3-wheeler

Similarly, two-wheeler sales also grew by more than 23 per cent to 18,47,708 units in November as against 14,94,797 units in same month previous year.

Led by electric vehicles, the three wheeler retail sales grew by 80 per cent y-o-yto 74,473 units in November as against 41,296 units in corresponding month last year.

Total sales

The total sales across all categories were recorded at 23,80,465 units during the month as compared with 18,93,647 units in November 2021.

“November has clocked highest retails in the history of the Indian automobile industry, with March 2020 as an exception when retails were higher due to BS-4 to BS-6 transition,” said Manish Raj Singhania, President, FADA.

On future outlook, Singhania said that RBI’s latest consumer confidence data suggests that customers are enthusiastic on account of better perception of the general economic situation, employment and household income. This along with the ongoing festive season has continued to help bring customers to the showrooms as on date.

In the meantime, most manufacturers are announcing price hikes. But, to counter this, and for the lower end of the pyramid, manufacturers have also started announcing discounts for slow moving products, lower variants and to clear their year-end stocks. This may help year-end sales to remain healthy, he said.

“While the above actions are positive, RBI has increased the repo-rate by 35 bps (225 bps increase since May’22) and continues to hint at more hikes in future. This increase now brings repo rate to 6.25 per cent, the highest since February 2019. This will further lead to a higher cost of borrowing, and along with price hikes made by manufacturers may dent consumer confidence specially in two-wheeler and entry level passenger vehicle segment,” Singhania said.

Along with this, the China lockdown may play spoiler by slowing the supply of semi-conductors. This may act as a speed-breaker and add to supply-demand mis-match which was showing improvement over the last few months, he added.

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