Mopeds take the slow road to extinction

It does not quite fit the bill as the archetypal dinosaur of the auto sector, but industry insiders acknowledge that mopeds are on the road to extinction.

The “Chal meri Luna” call that embodied the coming of age of this pre-liberalisation era relic has literally been silenced by the drone of modern speed demons. Companies that exited from the business include the Hero Group and most recently Kinetic, which dumped the product from its portfolio this year after its acquisition by M&M. In effect, there is just one remaining manufacturer of mopeds in the country - the TVS Group, with its XL Super priced at around Rs 21,000. It sold about 4 lakh mopeds last fiscal and has no plans for the segment in terms of new launches or brand revival.

“The market has been shrinking progressively as people prefer trendier two wheelers. We are just maintaining the line as there is a small segment of users,” said H S Goindi, senior vice-president of sales, TVS Motors.

Goindi added that most of the users of the mopeds today are from rural areas who use it for commuting and load carrying. After constituting close to 40% of the two wheeler market in the mid 80’s and early 90’s, mopeds constitute only around 5% of the 74 lakh units two wheeler market today.

According to analysts at Credit Analysis & Research Ltd, mopeds made a beginning in 60s with Mopeds India launching Suvega. Moped sales surpassed motorcycle and scooter sales by mid 1980s.

The industry then saw many new players entering the fray with Kinetic introducing ‘Luna’ and TVS introducing the TVS-50 model, the first two-seater moped in India.
While MIL was the initial market leader, Kinetic, TVS and Hero became major players by the mid 1980s.

However since the early part of this decade when mopeds commanded around 20% of the market (when over 6 lakh units were sold), it has been a steep downhill. The rising affluence of Indian’s and easy access to credit meant that mopeds turned began turning antique towards mid 2000.

“The growing popularity of motorbikes in the 90’s started the decline of mopeds. But the success of gearless scooters this decade in a sense put the final nail in the coffin,” said Revati Kasture, Head CARE Research.

“Maintenance of mopeds is very expensive and people cannot carry much load on it. Other alternatives like scooters have superior mileage and are more powerful than 75 cc mopeds,” said, Atul Gupta, vice-president, sales and marketing, Suzuki Motorcycle India.

Officials from other players like Bajaj and Yamaha agree that there is no meaning in looking at the segment as the low volumes makes it unviable to manufacture. It’s anyone’s guess when mopeds will finally run out of gas. However one thing’s for certain the slow pedal down the slope is getting painfully obvious.