[bijims]

Originally Posted by venus1975

Why is Honda showing no seriousness in publishing the variant-wise features of Elevate and making the display cars available in their showrooms? Kia unveiled the updated Seltos about a month after Honda unveiled the Elevate, and Seltos are already available in the showrooms. The test drives are expected to begin later this month and deliveries from next month.
What is Honda waiting for?

Kia had already planned this way ahead, while Honda has done the same, their timeliness were different and they are aiming for a festive season launch. So that may be the reason why Honda is lagging behind.

[venus1975]

Originally Posted by bijims

Kia had already planned this way ahead, while Honda has done the same, their timeliness were different and they are aiming for a festive season launch. So that may be the reason why Honda is lagging behind.

Yeah that may be the reason and Honda doesn't really want to be agile in responding to the competition. It is very clear that Honda is absolutely fine with losing the potential customers, who have booked both Elevate and Seltos and are okay to go with whoever gives them the car first, to Kia.

[bijims]

Originally Posted by venus1975

Yeah that may be the reason and Honda doesn't really want to be agile in responding to the competition. It is very clear that Honda is absolutely fine with losing the potential customers, who have booked both Elevate and Seltos and are okay to go with whoever gives them the car first, to Kia.

It is not easy to launch a product on the fly, in Honda's case they have to allocate the production line to an all-new product Elevate, by shifting the same from those earlier allocated to Amaze and City, this takes time and can't be done in an instant, whereas in Kia's case, it is just a facelift of an existing product and their best-seller for whom a dedicated production line is already in place, they only have to stop production for the existing Seltos, adjust for the changes and commence production for the new Seltos. It is not that easy in the case of Elevate for Honda.

P.S. I am not defending Honda here, they knew long back that the Seltos facelift will come to India this year, and could have acted upon it way back, but they will definitely have their reasons for not doing so. However, all said and done, if they would have launched the Elevate earlier and at the time Seltos' sales were dwindling, they could have captured a sizeable market.

[rg_sv]

Agree. Honda needs to act strategically now, price it very competitively and reveal it by end of this month to be back In the game otherwise they will loose a major potential customer base to kia.

[venus1975]

Originally Posted by bijims

However, all said and done, if they would have launched the Elevate earlier and at the time Seltos' sales were dwindling, they could have captured a sizeable market.

Absolutely. They should have launched Elevate in Q1 and started the deliveries around April this year rather than postponing it to October. They have lost a great opportunity and the delay is going to hurt them badly.

[Alive2Drive]

cancelled my honda elevate booking today and asked for a refund. Mine was the first booking with the cherish honda dealer. With a heavy heart, I had to let go off the booking due to lack of Hybrid.

[aseem23]

Originally Posted by Alive2Drive

cancelled my honda elevate booking today and asked for a refund. Mine was the first booking with the cherish honda dealer. With a heavy heart, I had to let go off the booking due to lack of Hybrid.

Difficult choice, and I wonder how many customers Honda will lose due to the lack of Hybrid options. I was definitely one of the potential buyers had Honda launched the Hybrid option. Maybe a perfect example of how the OEM market study got wrong, or maybe Honda will launch Elevate at a really competitive price to mitigate the impact of the Hybrid powertrain. Kia Seltos has generated huge interest and bookings, and I wonder how the upcoming Creta launch will further dent Honda's aspirations. Let's see what numbers will tell in the near future.

[skarthiksr]

Honda India's planning and execution of Elevate is disappointing. Firstly, they were very late in the SUV race. There were rumours and rumours over a long time about the upcoming car and finally they teased a sketch in January. It was in the news for sometime and the launch happened pretty late in June. Then, they launched the car and showcased it in the event, but still the car is still not in the showrooms. Then, the bookings opened with the variant option, but still no one knows what features go into what variants. And in the middle of all these, there is not a single TV ad on a brand new upcoming car(Regional channels).

I visited the Kia showroom last Friday to check out the Seltos and the showroom had a good number of people and to my surprise, I did not hear the word Elevate from a single customer out there during the discussions among themselves. This is a bit of contrast from what I have observed when people also talk about current/upcoming cars in the competition for a comparison. Kia has already started clocking good number of bookings for the Seltos and no idea what Honda is waiting for. May be for the Seltos pricing? And as others have already told, Honda should have started the delivery now and could have got a substantial numbers out of the Seltos's bookings had they speeded up the process, but Honda really missed the trick here.

[pannags]

Originally Posted by bijims

It is not easy to launch a product on the fly, in Honda's case they have to allocate the production line to an all-new product Elevate, by shifting the same from those earlier allocated to Amaze and City,

I agree, but frankly speaking, why would customers care!? This is something Honda should be concerned about, given their late entry into the CSUV market.

PS: While I'm a potential customer for the Elevate, I sometimes wonder if the announcement in January was only a statement of intent.

[beez]

Originally Posted by bijims

It is not easy to launch a product on the fly, in Honda's case they have to allocate the production line to an all-new product Elevate, by shifting the same from those earlier allocated to Amaze and City, this takes time and can't be done in an instant, whereas in Kia's case, it is just a facelift of an existing product. It is not that easy in the case of Elevate for Honda.

I politely beg to differ. As per Honda's own admission, they started planning for this SUV during COVID pandemic; agree, things would have been on hold for a bit.

But at that time, Honda did have Jazz, BR-V, and WR-V. All these were discontinued one after another from 2020 to 2023, freeing up the production lines. Also remember, they discontinued the 4th gen City, which was being sold side-by-side with the 5th gen. I do not think Amaze and City 5th gen had any major push in sales in this time period to justify that they they had to allot production to these freed-up lines (none of their models feature in top 20 cars being sold by volume).

Now, instead of Seltos, let us take the case of Hyundai Exter. News about this first appeared on Team-BHP on 1-Nov-2022, first-look post on 25-Apr-2023, bookings open announcement on 08-May-2023, first Exter ready on 23-Jun-2023, launched on 10-Jul-2023 (with variants and pricing), and deliveries beginning soon after. Hyundai also discontinued few models, but do remember they have Creta and Venue customers to cater to (with some variants having a long waiting period). All in 8 months, and to Hyundai's credit, they did this almost simultaneously with the Verna launch.

I do not have any clue what Honda's excuses are, but issue with production lines (if any) should be on the bottom of that list.

When you have arrived at the party this late, at least they could have cared to make some noise to to show we are here! It is not Honda Elevate but Honda Complacent.

P.S: I am a potential customer of Elevate and have pre-booked the car.

[Teleporter]

From the revealed internal communication it is apparent that ADAS is available only in the top variant of Epevate as opposed to City where it is available from V variant. Is it not a missed opportunity for Honda as they could have differentiated their product by offering first in segment sub 15lakh ex-showroom ADAS enabled product.

The top variant of elevate will have a stronger competitor in the form of new seltos, that would also be offering ADAS. Also, though debatable, the ADAS by Kia is more potent with both camera and radar based inputs compared to just camera based input in Honda Elevate.

So the unique proposition of ADAS by Honda will not mean much practically. Also, with the feature set on offer, and their variant wise distribution, it seems Honda is just hoping for the brand recall value to propel their sales. Hope is a good thing to have, but it can not be a strategy.

For me, if Elevate surprises with ADAS in V variant, then my booking for Elevate will materialize else I will explore more.

[GuChDa]

Originally Posted by Teleporter

From the revealed internal communication it is apparent that ADAS is available only in the top variant of Epevate as opposed to City where it is available from V variant. Is it not a missed opportunity for Honda as they could have differentiated their product by offering first in segment sub 15lakh ex-showroom ADAS enabled product.

The top variant of elevate will have a stronger competitor in the form of new seltos, that would also be offering ADAS. Also, though debatable, the ADAS by Kia is more potent with both camera and radar based inputs compared to just camera based input in Honda Elevate.

So the unique proposition of ADAS by Honda will not mean much practically. Also, with the feature set on offer, and their variant wise distribution, it seems Honda is just hoping for the brand recall value to propel their sales. Hope is a good thing to have, but it can not be a strategy.

For me, if Elevate surprises with ADAS in V variant, then my booking for Elevate will materialize else I will explore more.

From Honda scheme of things, this is a Urban car ( limited by engine and transmission) with added weight may be about 100 kgs over city.

Thereby ADAS doesn't make sense to those who would use it for city driving. Further, Honda could put all their feature set with ADAS only on their top trim and raise the price substantially (at par with say Creta SX(o} thereby offering lower trims to majority and be competitive and hook up people who are definitely decided upon having ADAS.

Under such a scenario, it's more there to watch on the variant wise feature list rather than only ADAS.

Imagine that 6 airbags, leather trim interiors with door pads also come to the top of the line variant with its 10.25 in infotainment system

Eager to see their variants not having 10.25 in system out of curiosity atleast. (Just to to know how the implementation has been)

[motographer]

I think the only ace left up Honda's sleeve is pricing. Indians are very value conscious buyers rather than brand loyal. Any loyalty like that similar to Honda, Toyota usually comes from the value that they offered. While the difference of reliability between Honda/Toyota and other manufacturers has reduced with time, Honda has not caught pace in features offered. Hence, by skipping many utilitarian features in the Elevate(some even less than City), Honda has made Elevate less of a value proposition compared to what City offered on comparison to it's rivals. Honda anyways doesn't have the same brand pull as earlier. They've got to make VX variant a VFM proposition like the City. If they goof up the pricing by remaining in some delusion of their erstwhile brand image, I fear it'll be bad news for Elevate. Also, as other members mentioned, with the sloppy launch event and marketing activities thereafter, Honda has definitely appeared very lazy and indifferent to the Indian car buyer. I hope the pricing is sensible but I can clearly see Kia taking full advantage of Honda's indifference and wooing away potential Elevate buyers by sheer value of product and making waves through promotions and display. It's a shame that Honda can't provide vehicles for display and variant wise feature list even when this huge period has passed since launch.

[UD17]

Originally Posted by motographer

Also, as other members mentioned, with the sloppy launch event and marketing activities thereafter, Honda has definitely appeared very lazy and indifferent to the Indian car buyer.

Even though the general response of people for Elevate was a kind of positive (even after sloppy launch efforts) But Honda has made it complete mess now by not dispatching cars to showrooms. From known people i know that, Honda is just producing few hundred cars this month.

Really an embarrassing situation for the brand like Honda. First a sloppy launch, then the ambiguity on timelines and god knows when will they reveal the price.
In the meantime, The Exter came with full fledges launch. Seltos also knocked the door with over 13K bookings.

[outdoorlover]

[quote=UD17;5586821

Really an embarrassing situation for the brand like Honda. First a sloppy launch, then the ambiguity on timelines and god knows when will they reveal the price.
In the meantime, The Exter came with full fledges launch. Seltos also knocked the door with over 13K bookings.[/QUOTE]

I think Honda advanced the date of the launch by a few months only to garner advance bookings and to try and stay relevant in the market so that by the time they get their product out by the festive season, they still have some customers who are committed to the new model and not get swayed over by the onslaught of new launches by Maruti/ Toyota, and the Koreans.