While jury's out on millennials, used cars partly to blame for auto slump

New car sales suffered their biggest monthly decline on record in August, as deliveries fell 41% from a year earlier to 115,957 units

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman this week said millennials opting for taxi-hailing services like Uber are a factor for the drop in vehicle sales. While the jury is still out on this, automakers face another speed bump: used cars. 

The market for pre-owned cars grew from 0.8 times of new cars in 2012 to 1.2 times in the year ended March 2019, analysts led by Chirag Shah at Edelweiss Securities Ltd wrote in a note. The spurt pushed up the annual growth rate of the segment to 11% versus 4% for new cars in the period, the analysts said.