Swaraj Baggonkar Moneycontrol News
Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has announced that including a SsangYong derived product, the utility vehicle specialist will launch three new products by March 2019.
The Mumbai-based company will launch the Marazzo, a multi-people carrier by September end, a compact sports utility vehicle around Diwali and the next generation Ssangyong Rexton, which will be rebranded as Mahindra, by March 2019.
Speaking to analysts, Managing Director of Mahindra & Mahindra Pawan Goenka said, "In terms of brand new products or brand new platforms after these three launches (U321, S201 and G4 Rexton) there will be nothing for the rest of the next calendar year. We will have couple of refreshes during the calendar year 2019. Our new platform launches will start from 2020 which could be a full model replacement or a new model."
Like its peers, M&M will take a pause in new model launches as the country prepares to adopt the Bharat Stage VI emission norms, set to come into effect from April 1, 2020. Under BS-VI prices of all vehicles will see a steep rise especially those that run on diesel.
A majority of M&M vehicles, including the Scorpio, Bolero and XUV500, run on diesel engines. The investment required to upgrade models to BS-VI from BS-IV is so high that some companies have decided to phase out some diesel vehicles altogether.
As for M&M, the company has already stopped producing the sub-4 meter, Xylo-derived Quanto, while it is yet to take a call on the Xylo itself. M&M will upgrade only those products to BS-VI which are "volume generating".
"Quanto has been stopped and Xylo continues and it is replacing the demand that (Chevrolet) Tavera had. We don’t see a reason to remove that product," Goenka explained.
M&M had stretched one of its existing models TUV300 to add two more seats at the back to make it a nine-seater model. This model was launched in June this year and was priced at Rs 9.47 lakh.
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