 "Kwid launch sparks price war with Alto")
French car maker Renault on Thursday introduced sports utility vehicle (SUV)-inspired Kwid at an aggressive price of Rs 2.56 lakh to compete against Maruti Suzuki’s Alto and Hyundai’s Eon.
The Kwid is priced attractively to take on the Alto 800 (Rs 256,311), which is the small car segment leader and brings sizeable volumes for Maruti, the country’s largest player. The top-end variant will come at Rs 3.53 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi). The vehicle only comes in a petrol variant.
“Kwid is an attractive, innovative and affordable car, built in India with a localisation of 98 per cent. We wanted to be aggressive in pricing the car to give value to customers. This is India's most fuel-efficient petrol car with mileage of 25.17 km a litre. The cost of maintenance will be 19 per cent lower than the market leader,” said Sumit Sawhney, country chief executive and managing director at Renault India.
Built on an all-new platform, the Kwid is Renault’s latest attempt at marking its presence in the Indian car market where it has a share of less than two per cent.
The Kwid, which looks like a cross between a hatchback and a SUV, is a breakaway model from its competition, which other than the Alto includes Tata Nano and Hyundai Eon. With its high stance and bonnet, the Kwid’s design draws influence from once-popular elder sibling Duster. Renault officials refused to call the Kwid an SUV.
“We were not benchmarking this car against any other vehicle. We wanted to create a new benchmark. Kwid will be a big contributor in helping us reach a market share of five per cent by 2017,” Sawhney said.
About 175 Renault dealers across the country started to accept bookings of the car more than 10 days ago. Consumers could pay Rs 11,000 to Rs 25,000 as booking amount. Deliveries would start from mid-October.
There has been no new entrant in the sub-one litre engine space since the time Hyundai entered the segment with the Eon years ago. Maruti and Tata Motors have been giving timely updates to their products to keep consumers excited.
The Kwid has the second most-powerful engine among the four, but is bigger overall than any of the three other rivals in its class. It offers a big 300 litre bootspace, nearly double compared to the Alto.
Renault will launch a virtual showroom for Kwid to address customers who cannot visit the showroom. A mobile app has also been launched where one can book the car.
