SUV sales registered a commendable 47% (YOY) increase in December 2019. 2019 was one of the toughest year for the Auto Industry in the recent past. Most segments landed up registering de-growth across the year however the SUV segment has managed to post growth in many months.
The same trend has continued in December too as SUVs managed to register a solid 47% growth on YOY basis. Majority of the growth has been driven by the new market entrants like the Seltos, Venue and Hector. If we talk about absolute numbers, OEMs sold 59K SUVs in December 2019 against 40K SUVs in December 2018.
The best selling SUV In December 2019 was the Vitara Brezza which achieved this feat by selling 13,658 units and registering a 41% growth over last year. The Venue from Hyundai managed to grab the second spot by selling 9,521 units. Its sales were almost constant when we compare its performance in December and November 2019.
Creta managed to grab the third spot by selling 6,713 units, which isn’t bad considering that the next gen Creta is just around the corner. Seltos’ sales figures stood at 4,645 units after registering an unprecedented high of 14K units last month. Seltos’ last month’s performance had made Kia Motors the fourth largest OEM in a record time span (since its official debut in August).
5th spot was claimed by Tata Nexon, which has been registering consistent sales of around 4K units regularly. Tata sold 4,350 Nexon’s in December’19, just 43 short of December’18’s figures. Mahindra’s Scorpio managed to achieve sales of 3,656 units last month, witnessing a 35% increase over its last year’s performance in the same month. In November’19 too the SUV had sold around 3.8K units.
Hector’s sales have been relatively consistent around the 3K mark. In December’19 too, MG sold 3,021 units, a minor 6% decrease when compared with Nov’19. Mahindra’s latest offering, the XUV300 seems to have settled around the 2K mark as it managed total sales of 2,132 units last month. Recently, the SUV did cross the 40K sales mark.
Highlights of the month included XUV500, which achieved a 22% growth over last year and a 42% growth over last month. Kicks too had a surprisingly improved month as it registered a 4454% increase over last year’s performance. The growth looks exceptionally high as Nissan would have just started the shipment of Kicks around this time last year (which explains the low numbers). However objectively, sales of Kicks aren’t anywhere close to what the Japanese automaker would have hoped for.
Two SUVs whose sales have plummeted significantly are the Nissan Terrano and Renault Captur. If their performance continues similarly, there are high chances that they might be discontinued ahead of the BS6 emission norms deadline.
