INDIANS HAVE “ARRIVED”

Maybe a decade ago, India was the ‘small car” capital of the world. But no longer so. Its SUVs and SUVs – India seems to have fallen in love with these cars even as fuel prices are ruling higher than the aviation fuel price.

More than 50% of all the vehicles sold in Sept and also the trailing July to Sept quarter were SUVs.  Sales in Sept of SUVs were at 87,720 units while that of hatchbacks and sedans were much lower at 64,235 units. And in Q2FY22, total SUVs sold stood at 3,67,457 units.

So why are Indians buying SUVs when fuel prices are soaring upwards? Those in the industry say that it is the new ‘compact’ size of the SUVs, which gives the feel of a small car yet its neither quiet small nor an SUV – something in between. And consistently, there has been a fall in the price of SUVs, which makes more economic to buy than a small car. These compact SUVs give what the customers look for in an SUV – style quotient, visibility, power and cabin space. SUVs are about getting command and control on the road – that’s what is at the crux of this growing illogical panache for SUVs.

This craze for SUVs in a country like Dubai is understandable as fuel there is cheaper than water. But in a country like India, where fuel costs are rising and expected to go up further, interest rates are poised to rise and EMIs burn a hole in the pocket, this lure for SUVs makes no economic sense. 

Surely, the reason is beyond economics. It is more about creating a perception of oneself. Just as a Nano could not take off purely because it was ‘perceived’ as a car for the poor, SUVs are booming because they are perceived to be a symbol of higher status, a vehicle which announces that ‘you have arrived’ in life.

Yes, there are other reasons too – higher seating capacity, SUVs are safer as they are larger and heavier, higher cargo capacity, can tackle the potholed roads better than a small car and maybe, it is good when going traveling off the beaten track.

But these are all reasons to justify the choice of a SUV. Yes, the real reason is that people in India buy an SUV today simply because they know and want to exhibit that they can afford to buy a SUV. They buy simply because they can. Surely with families becoming smaller, cars should have ideally got smaller but today, smaller families have bigger homes and bigger cars. Every buy is today driven by this need to ‘show’ rather than about practicality. Strangely, this new generation, which is buying SUVs is stated to be environmentally conscious so then how come they opt for gas guzzlers like SUVs? Or is being selectively ‘environmentally friendly’ also about creating an image, being ‘cool’.

Just as the automobile sector is a reflection of the economy, the buy and sell pattern is a reflection of the attitude of people. And today, we have thrown away economic and logical sense, purely ruled by the need to satisfy our senses.

This is the paradox of our times. As said by Dalai Lama, “We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment, We've been all the way to the moon and back but have trouble crossing the street to meet the neighbor. We built more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever but have less communication. We have become long on quantity but short on quality.”