Comment by alephnerd
1 month ago
All automotive goods in India below the $17,800 pricepoint are essentially "Made in India", not China, and in a lot of cases exported abroad under Renault, Suzuki, Toyota, Hyundai, and Mitsubishi badges or directly sold by Mahindra (especially South America and South Africa) or Tata.
Chinese manufacturers got hounded out and as a result the PRC tried [0] and failed [1] to weaponize the WTO against India [0] for India trying to subsidize GreenTech driven industrialization.
Chinese manufacturers are allowed to enter India, but on terms similar to what the PRC used when Western, Japanese, and Korean players began entering the Chinese market - something which German policymakers even pointed out [2].
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-files-wto-case-aga...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/india-stops-chinas-reque...
[2] - https://table.media/china/thema-des-tages/indien-weshalb-chi...
Toyota Hycross is easily 2x the price and is made in India AFAIK.
That's due to brand positioning.
If you position an automotive product in India to be affordable, you lose aspirational consumers (India1).
Toyota is trying to position itself as a luxury brand in India in order to better defend revenue, as in NAM and JP the Toyota brand has a similar reputation as Maruti Suzuki does in India.