Mahindra & Mahindra Limited today announced that effective 1 July 2019, the price of its personal vehicles range will increase by up to Rs 36,000. This price increase is due to the implementation of AIS 145 Safety Norms across all passenger vehicles in India.
The implementation of AIS 145 Safety Norms mandate the fitment of several safety features including driver airbag, seatbelt reminder for driver and co-driver, rear parking sensors and an over speed alert for the drivers.
While the price rise will affect all the models, Mahindra SUVs like Scorpio, Bolero, TUV300 and KUV100 NXT will see substantial price increases while prices of brands such as the XUV500 and Marazzo will increase marginally as these are already in compliance with the AIS145 safety norms.
“The newest product in Mahindra's line-up, the XUV300 and the flagship Alturas G4, already come with these features, so we don't expect their prices to see much revision. The Thar, meanwhile is being discontinued given that it won't meet the upcoming crash test norms. The Thar700 has been launched as a run-out special
"At Mahindra, safety has been at the core of our product development process and we welcome the regulatory requirements relating to safety upgrades. We value every road user’s life and have been effectively contributing to the evolving safety ecosystem. However, the safety regulatory requirement has led to some cost increases. Consequently, we are taking a price hike across some of our passenger vehicles, effective 1 July 2019," Rajan Wadhera, president - automotive sector, M&M Ltd, said.