Tata Motors Ltd, India’s second largest passenger vehicle maker, has posted yet another record-breaking monthly sales number, selling a whopping 72,485 vehicles in January 2022.
Unlike in the last 18 months or so, the growth in the first month of 2022 has come from both the commercial vehicle as well as the passenger vehicle business.
Including exports, the total number of vehicles sold in the month was 76,210 — possibly a record in recent years.
Passenger vehicle sales crossed the 40,000 mark — possibly for the first time — by coming in at 40,777 vehicles sold in January 2022. This is a whopping 51% higher than the same month of last year.
This is also clearly higher than the 35,299 vehicles sold in the previous month of December, and also the 33,925 units sold in the festival month of October last year.
In keeping with recent trends, electric vehicle sales also set a new record, coming in at 2,892 units in January — up nearly six times compared to the same month of last year. This is also substantially higher than the 2,255 units sold in December.
CV sales continued to pick up momentum and normalize.
Total CV sales in January 2022 were up 7% on year at 35,268 vehicles, which was also higher than December’s tally of 34,151 units.
Sales of medium and heavy vehicles, which had been hit especially hard by COVID-19 lockdowns, was at 8,660 in January, up from 8,106 in December.
VECV SALES FALL
Even as Tata Motors’ commercial vehicles division did well in January 2022, volumes at competitor Volvo Eicher Commercial Vehicles or VECV fell compared to the same month of last year.
The company sold 4,523 vehicles in India, down 9% from 4,964 units sold in January of last year.
This is possibly the first time the company is reporting a decline in its monthly sales in recent months, and could indicate some kind of fatigue in the market.
Still, despite the decline seen in January auto sales, Volvo Eicher CV continues to run 42% higher in its sales for the current financial year that ends in March.
The company has sold 34,376 vehicles in the first 10 months of the current financial year, compared with 24,284 units in the same ten months of the last financial year — a year ravaged by COVID-19.
VECV’s exports continued to improved, rising 44% on the year to 802 units in January 2022, compared with only 555 units exported in January 2021.
Sales of Volvo branded heavy buses continued to remain under pressure as the country was in the grips of the third wave of COVID in January.
Sales of heavy duty buses fell to 34 units in January 2022 compared to 50 in the same month of last year.
Sales of trucks above 3.5 tons of carrying capacity were down by around 10-12% during the month.