“WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR SUBSIDIES AS FAR AS HYBRID IS CONCERNED”

Says TKM's senior VP, Naveen Soni

ON HYBRID TECHNOLOGY

“I am not sure whether we intended to bring a diesel [Vellfire]. One of the key pillars for us is going to be hybrid. I don’t think there is going to be one technology that will determine what consumers will buy.

"Way to increase [hybrid adoption] is government subsidies. But there should not be any disadvantage given to any technology. We are saying whatever was the previous condition, let’s bring it back [28 per cent GST].”

ON THE MARUTI SUZUKI PARTNERSHIP

“[Hybrid technology] is the reason why this partnership was started. We will offer [hybrid] technologies to them which is available with us, and they have certain marketing expertise and core competence of knowing the Indian car market closely for a very long time.

"Glanza sales are very much as per our expectations, in fact it’s been getting better by the month. We have seen that there are first time Toyota buyers, a substantial figure of 59 per cent. "We have declared that we will be offering this line [idle Etios production line] to our partners namely Maruti Suzuki and they will produce their vehicles on the same line, so it’s a question of when."

ON STOPPING THE ETIOS AND LIVA “These are global decisions based on various product profiles, in India or otherwise, that at this point of time offering a different product for a higher product category for the customers could be a better way to serve the market. We have offered the Yaris and Glanza which in a way complements our product line-up."

ON THE BS6 PRICE HIKE FOR DIESEL

“The only challenge we have to overcome this year is BS6 adoption. We had to take a difficult decision, that we will not transfer [the price] it in one go, we will have a stage wise implementation. At the first stage less than 50 per cent of the price has been transferred to the consumer, roughly about `80,000 [for the Innova]. The line-up has been different, for example the 2.8 disappearing and therefore 2.4 coming at the high end, so because of that the net increase at the high end might have been less than `40,000. ”