The slowdown and therefore the pandemic pushed commercial vehicle sales to their lowest level in 11 years in FY21. However, watching the revival in demand within the past few months, the segment can come near the height sales levels in 2023 itself, a top industry official said.
Medium and heavy truck sales between January and July this year has already surpassed volumes of the whole 2020 and is predicted to shut at almost double the sales volume compared to last year, said Satyakam Arya, director , and CEO, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV), in an exclusive interaction with Moneycontrol.
“The demand is returning and recovery from the second wave has been far better than the primary one. This year the market are going to be tons better than in 2020. We could come near the height sales in 2023,” Arya said.
Last year, the industry ended with sales of 106,000 trucks. This year till July, the amount was already 107,000 units. “If this trend continues, the industry will close at around 205,000. Though demand remains to not normal levels but if it continues like this, we believe that in 2022, the industry would be within the region of 250,000-280,000 trucks – the 2019 level,” Arya added.
According to registration data shared by the Federation of Automobile Dealer Association (FADA), CV retail sales grew by 98 percent in August to 53,150 units as against 26,851 units sold within the same month last year and only 15 percent less than August 2019 sales. In July 2021, CV sales had grown by 166 percent.
“CV segment continues to witness some recovery returning majorly thanks to low base of last year. While small commercial vehicles had already shown good recovery thanks to intracity goods movement, medium and heavy commercial vehicles are learning pace in specific geographies where the govt is rolling out infrastructure projects,” FADA noted.
Demand for heavy trucks from the infrastructure sector, mining, and long-haul segments has been on the increase . E-commerce has emerged as a sunrise segment for little and intermediate commercial vehicle segments.
“Construction continues to be a robust segment. We see very strong buying from the e-commerce segment… even stronger than last year. We also are seeing demand revival from the long-haul sectors like cement and steel and these were the segments which are most depressed,” Arya added.
DICV’s own volumes at 7,000 units have quite doubled within the January to June period compared to an equivalent six months last year. the corporate is working its plant in Chennai in two shifts and is ready to travel to 3 shifts if demand moves even higher. Arya, however, warns about the availability chain niggles that are troubling the auto industry since the past eight months.
“The supply chain continues to be a challenge and from here on matching demand with supply till 2023 would be the name of the sport . additionally , we’ve the third wave (of the pandemic) which some say would have a way milder impact than the primary two but nobody can predict about its severity,” Arya added.
