Kolkata: In the first two quarters of this fiscal, nearly 30% of cars sold in the country sport automatic transmissions, setting the pace for sales of automatic cars to cross the 11-lakh units mark in 2023-24.
Last year, the industry recorded sales of 9.8 lakh automatic cars. With electric vehicle sales on the rise, carmakers expect a rapid rise in the adoption of auto transmission with 50% of the cars sold in 2030 to feature one of five options available: auto gear shift (AGS) or automated manual transmission (AMT); continuous variable transmission (CVT), dual-clutch transmission (DCT) and intelligent variable transmission (IVT).
Speaking to TOI,
Maruti Suzuki
senior executive officer (marketing & sales) Shashank Srivastava said that while AGS/AMT that substantially reduced the price of automatic cars helped provide the initial boost in sales, the emergence of EVs and hybrid vehicles that do not have manual transmission will give a further fillip. “People have also realised the convenience of driving
automatics
. As cities get more congested, people will shift to automatic,” he said. At Maruti Suzuki, 13% of the sales currently comprise automatic cars with Nexa contributing to 58% and the rest coming from its Arena outlets.
The share of auto transmission in the overall Indian car market sales pie was 14% in 2018-19. It increased to 16% in 2019-20; 17% in 2020-21; 23% in 2021-22; 25% in 2022-23 and 29% in the first six months of 2023-24. At
Hyundai Motor India Ltd
, 22% of the cars sold are automatic. HMIL chief operating officer Tarun Garg said the availability of automatic transmission across the entire product range helped customers choose the car that suits them best. “Hyundai offers a range of transmissions such as – AMT, AT, DCT, and IVT — catering to dynamic customer demand in different segments. We have introduced AMT with paddle shifters. ” he said.
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