Ford, VW & Nissan skip Auto Expo 2018 as their exports trump local sales

Three global car majors – Ford, Nissan, and Volkswagen – are skipping the ongoing Auto Expo 2018. There is one common trend among these three companies — they all ship more cars to overseas markets than their local sales within India.

Interestingly, there are no other carmakers with operations in the Indian market that export more cars than their domestic sales. American carmaker Ford, which has two manufacturing units in the country (Chennai in Tamil Nadu and Sanand in Gujarat), has overtaken Korean carmaker Hyundai this year to become the largest exporter of cars from India.

In the first nine months of the current financial year, Ford shipped 134,575 units, registering a growth of almost 12 per cent compared to the previous year. In the same period, the manufacturer sold 62,554 units in the Indian market, registering a decline of nearly six per cent. Ford ships more than double the volume it sells in the local market.

Like Ford, German auto major Volkswagen sells almost more than double the volume in export markets compared to India. In the first nine months of the financial year, it shipped 71,677 units of cars, reporting a growth of over ten per cent. However, its domestic sales in the specified period stood at 34,979 cars, with a decline of six per cent.

In the first nine months, Japanese carmaker Nissan shipped 46,502 units to export destinations while its domestic sale stood at 38,928 vehicles.

The sixth largest exporter of cars from India saw its domestic sales slip by more than nine per cent this year.

There is another common trend among these three players — they are all registering a volume decline in a market that is expanding at over eight per cent. None of these three players have a market share of more than three per cent in the world's fifth-biggest car market where over three million units are sold in a year.

Industry experts said it is not a great business decision to invest millions of rupees in participating in the Auto Expo when a company's domestic market demand is not doing well.

General Motors is the fourth global car maker that is not a part of the ongoing expo. But its case is different from the above three players. In May last year, the company decided to stop local sales of its cars while announcing its plans to focus exclusively on the export market. The company has shipped 60,707 cars from India in the first nine months of the current financial year. General Motors is now the fifth-biggest exporter of cars from the country.