On Electric vehicles: The electric vehicle policy is already there. The problem with electric vehicles is that because India is basically a small-car market, the cost of electrification of small cars puts most vehicles out of the reach of customers. In addition, for small cars there is a problem of charging infrastructure because a large portion of small car holders do not park their cars at home and, therefore, do not have the facility of charging their cars at night. So movement of electrification for small cars is still going to wait till these two problems of affordability and infrastructure can be resolved. This will take a little time. However, the bigger cars can be electrified because their owners have charging infrastructure and the proportionate increase in cost is lower. As far as scrapping policy, it is not a means of doing anything long-term for demand.

On shared mobility: My view has always been that shared mobility actually increases the extent to which people drive in cars. The total man-kilometres go up and you have to not just look at first time sale of cars but also the replacement cycle. So, the more the cars are used, quicker is the replacement. An ordinary individual runs a car for 10,000km and, therefore, his replacement on account of the vehicle becoming uneconomical is much longer whereas the position is quite different for shared mobility.

On amendments to the Motor Vehicle Act: We have already seen some of those. They were published some time ago and lot of them are related to increasing safety on the roads, increasing the penalty for violation of traffic rules, which is all very good. Other rules related to safety and emission, those are already in place. I don’t think much is going to change there. On Growth prospects: I don’t think the first half of the year is going to see much growth actually but I do expect the second half to be quite different. We are expecting to see a 4-8% production growth for FY20.

On demand slowdown: I have been looking at past data on car sales. In both 2008 and 2013, in the years before the general elections, car sales dipped substantially and in 2009 and 2014, post elections the car sales went up sharply. That is the pattern that could be repeated. The difference this year is that there is uncertainty about the price of oil because of the US-Iran situation and because of price rise in general. I think that people’s understanding of what is happening in terms of costs and new regulations may create a certain amount of anxiety and uncertainty in the minds of people. I think the normal trend is for sales to go up but these two factors might lead to less sales and so we have to see what happens in July. This is a kind of cycle that seems to be happening pre-election year. Why it happened I am not sure. Last year of course we attributed it to the insurance requirement, fuel prices going up but whether those are the real causes or whether it is pre-election uncertainty and sentiment which is really responsible only we will know in few months what really is the cause.

On expectations from the new government and the budget: My belief is that during the first 100 days, the government could come up with lot of big ticket reforms that will create a kind of positive environment for people to shed their uncertainty and inhibitions and start buying not only cars but also a lot of other consumer products. It is more a question of sentiment and reforms is what is required.