Maruti Heads on with Honda Products

Maruti is trying to tighten its loose ends in SUV and in premium sedan segment. This New Delhi's one of the leading automobile manufacturers is also taking heads on with the products of Honda, this after sx4 that was launched against the city in premium sedan- now in SUV.
Maruti is ready to drive into another Honda defense structure after the sx4. Soon, it will launch its SUV which is the new grand Vitara to take on the Honda CRV. This happens to be Maruti's second experiment with the Vitara. It first launched the Vitara in 2003 but sold a menial 380, as compared to the Honda CRV, which has sold more than 7400 units since its launch in the same year. Even Hyundai Tuscon has sold 1626 units since its launch in 2005. Maruti hopes that the new 2 litre Vitara, which is priced between Rs 14-16 lakh, will bring home the numbers.
Maruti Udyog MD Jagdish Khattar said that it is small and compact and they are offering it with a price which will be very attractive.
The new grand Vitara, known as the Escudo in Japan, will be available in both the automatic and manual versions.
The new Honda CRV is a more powerful vehicle but it also comes with a heavy price tag of almost Rs 18 lakh.
Car enthusiasts along with analysts are interested to see if Maruti can win over customers with an aggressive pricing strategy.
About Maruti Udyog Limited
New Delhis' Maruti Udyog Limited is one of the leading automobile manufacturers in India as well as the market leader in the car segment, both in terms of volume of vehicles sold and revenue earned. It is a leading four-wheeler automobile manufacturer in South Asia and was the first company in India to massively produce and sell more than one million cars. And it is largely credited for having brought in an automobile revolution to India.
Though the actual production commenced in 1983, Maruti Udyog Limited (MUL) was actually established in February 1981. It has produced more than 5 Million vehicles through 2004. Marutis are sold in India and various other countries, depending upon export orders. Suzuki in Pakistan and other South Asian countries sell cars similar to Marutis (but not manufactured by Maruti Udyog).
Yearly, the company exports more than 30,000 cars and has an extremely large domestic market in India selling over five hundred thousand cars annually. More than a million units of this car have been sold all over the world so far. Maruti Alto currently tops the sales charts.
As of May 10, 2007, Indian government sold its complete share to other financial institutions, making the government longer a stake holder in Maruti Udyog. About Honda
Honda is well known for its diverse line up of quality automobiles and car parts under Honda such as Honda CRX parts and Acura name plates, and for its motorcycles, ATVs, power products, marine engines, and personal watercraft
Tokyo Japan's Yuri Kageyama writing for the AP reported that Honda's car navigation system already takes the fastest route to a destination through avoiding traffic jams. Now, drivers will get information with regard earthquakes and warnings of heavy rainfall ahead on roads.
Shown to reporters in Wednesday, Honda Motor Co.'s service will be offered beginning with the redesigned Fit subcompact which is set to go on sale in Japan later this year. Executive Manabu Nishimae said that there are no plans so far to offer it overseas. He told the reporters that their company believes that information services are an essential part of a quality of a car.
Drivers pay mobile phone bills for relaying data, though the service is for free. For frequent users, data transmission cards for a set monthly fee of about $8 are available. Over 530,000 drivers use the current navigation service in Japan, and that figure is nearly 40 percent of Honda owners.
E-mail warnings with the latest upgrade will be sent to a pre-assigned address when car with the system is in an area of a strong earthquake. It is handy in a quake-prone nation like Japan. Icons of exclamation marks pop up on the monitor if heavy rain is forecast on a planned route.
Japan's No. 2 auto manufacturer and Honda Civic parts maker also upgraded its map system so that updates take just a few minutes to be downloaded. Disks with map data had to be changed up to now.
Based in Tokyo, Honda said that it found a way to compress data so that portions of a map, such as new roads, get relayed piecemeal. Furthermore, it said that driving time is cut on the average by 20 percent.
All the major automakers in the world offer car navigation services that include some that give guides to nearby restaurants. Not only that, some automatically calls ambulances in cases of accidents and connect to human operators.
One of the featured capabilities of Honda's system is that it collects information from individual Honda cars on the road. In the new earthquake notification service, for example, the system will be able to show which roads have been shut down.
General Manager Takeshi Imai said that this kind of detailed information could even tell drivers exactly which lane of a freeway is congested. He further said that Honda's telematics is already moving toward its next level

Source: http://riverside-honda.blogspot.com/2007/09/maruti-heads-on-with-honda-products.html