Hyundai Motor India Limited (HMIL), India’s second-largest carmaker today jumped into the compact Sports Utility Vehicle segment with the ‘Venue’, their latest global product. India is the launch market for this new product from the Korean brand and SS Kim, HMIL’s new managing director believes that it will be huge hit particularly since the carmaker claims it is India’s first ‘fully connected’ SUV. Higher specification levels of the Venue will have over thirty connected features including 10 features specifically for India. These will be powered by Hyundai’s ‘Blue Link’ technology that will allow drivers to connect to streaming entertainment and live maps and the car will feature a virtual mobile SIM card to access the streaming information. The service will be complimentary for the first three years and HMIL has also trained 615 ‘Blue Link Wizards’ all across India to help new Hyundai customers learn the connected features of the vehicle.
The Venue, which will take on the Maruti-Suzuki Brezza, Mahindra XUV300, Ford EcoSport and Tata Nexon will come with three engine options, two petrol and one diesel. This includes a all-new one-litre turbocharged petrol engine which also features a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox as an automatic option. A 1.2-litre petrol with a five-speed manual transmission and 1.4 litre diesel with a six-speed manual transmission will also be available. There will be four trim levels, with entry-level prices starting at Rs 6.5 lakh (ex-showroom all-India) for petrol and Rs 7.75 lakh for diesel. The top-line turbo-petrol model will cost Rs 11.1 lakh. While HMIL indicated that these are introductory prices they made it clear that there is no timeline for the prices to be adjusted upwards, given the current market slowdown. “We want to give the customer confidence in the product through the pricing”, Kim told members of the media.
HMIL has already seen over 50,000 enquiries and over 15,000 confirmed bookings for the Venue orders for which began earlier this month, two-thirds of the demand has been for petrol variants and there is also strong demand for the automatic according to HMIL officials. And Hyundai confirmed that they will continue to produce and sell diesel vehicles after the introduction of Bharat Stage 6 emission norms, this after rival Maruti-Suzuki indicated they would withdraw from selling diesels, the Venue is not BS6 compliant for the moment. The company also indicated that they would be adding some 50,000 new units to their production capacity in Chennai but have no plans to add another production line just yet and Kim refused to confirm if Hyundai would produce vehicles at the upcoming Kia facility in Andhra Pradesh.