Hyundai to introduce Prime series for taxi segment

Hyundai India recently launched mid-life facelifts of the Grand i10 hatchback and the Xcent compact sedan. The company has now announced that it will continue to sell the pre-facelift models of these two car lines under a new Prime series, which will be exclusively aimed towards fleet customers and taxi operators. As a result, the Grand i10 Prime and the Xcent Prime will be available only for commercial customers, while their respective facelifted models will be sold only to private customers.

This step has reportedly been taken to provide a significant differentiation between the automaker's products for the commercial segment and those for private buyers. Talking about this decision, Hyundai India's Director of Marketing and Sales, Rakesh Srivastava, has commented that if a product is available in the commercial segment, it loses aspirational value from a private customer's view point. The new Prime series will thus be Hyundai's attempt to avoid such circumstances by offering exclusive products for the commercial as well as private segments.

Currently, only the Grand i10 and Xcent have been added to the Prime series. Hyundai has indicated that more cars might be added to this commercial-exclusive product line-up in the distant future. Interestingly, this is the same approach that Maruti adopted when it launched the second-gen Dzire in India and converted the first-gen model to a taxi-only product with the Dzire Tour moniker.

The commercial customers will thus now be able to only get the pre-facelift Grand i10 and Xcent, which miss on the new cosmetic changes and the larger 1.2-litre, three-cylinder diesel engine. Instead, the two Prime products will still come with the older model's 1.1-litre, three-cylinder CRDi unit.

Hyundai hasn't announced prices of the Grand i10 Prime and Xcent Prime yet. An official announcement about the same is expected to be made in the coming weeks.

Source: Car and Bike