Honda Cars India braces up for new products but the new Civic is not a part of it

After the amazing success of the compact sedan Amaze, Honda Cars India is planning for massive product expansion in India to further boost its market share in the domestic car market.

According to the President and Chief Executive Officer, Hironori Kanayama and the Senior VP Sales and Marketing of Honda Cars, Jnaneswar Sen, the company is aiming to increase the operating field from the present 10% to a whopping 50% in the coming years.
Honda India has massive plans to expand in India both in terms of product portfolio as well as production capacity. Honda’s second factory in Tapukara, Rajasthan is the company’s first comprehensive diesel engine manufacturing facility in the world with a production capacity of 163,000 engines annually. From 2014 the Tapukara plant will also start rolling out cars.

Honda has already expressed that the company is going to launch 4 new models in India by 2015. The first among these will be the next generation Honda Jazz that is expected to arrive in early 2014. The all new Jazz will be followed by a seven seater MPV and a compact SUV. The fourth model is not confirmed by the company but it is expected to be a new redesigned Honda City.

Honda India also plans to export the India made Amaze sedan in the overseas markets. The final decision on the particular markets where the Amaze would be exported will be taken this year. Honda’s focus remains to fulfill the growing demands of the Amaze in the Indian market. Honda has recently launched the Amaze in Nepal and a consignment of less than 100 vehicles was exported in June.
Kanayama has also confirmed that the new Honda cars will have to adhere to the new rules of the Indian government in order to make the models affordable. However, all the cars would not be compact models.

As far as the seven seated MPV is concerned, it is still in the development process, and the Japanese company is working hard to maximize the common components on Brio’s platform in order to cut down development costs. Honda has also confirmed that few of the new India bound models will debut at the 2014 Auto Expo.

When the Honda Acura is concerned, Kanayama said that there are no plans to introduce the car in India right now, as importing the cars will make them exorbitantly priced and there will be very less takers of the car. Moreover, the Indian market demands are too less for the Acura to be manufactured locally. He also added that he hopes that Acura launches in India sometime in the future. However, there are no plans to launch the Acura in India anytime in the next few years.

Honda has also confirmed that there is no plan to launch the CR-V diesel variant. The low demand of the Civic is making Honda to have no intentions of re-launching even the petrol Civic, so the diesel variant is out of the question.