India is turning into an SUV country

The culture and meaning of cars are changing as the country gets richer.

Getting into Bangalore, India's start-up capital, is easy: arrive at the gorgeous new garden-themed terminal, collect your bags, and zip down the buttery-smooth National Highway 44 into the city.

Getting around Bangalore is another matter. It is the most heavily gridlocked city in India, with average speeds during rush hour of 18kmh, according to TomTom, a navigation-technology firm.

That has not stopped the city's residents from buying ever more vehicles. The number of registered cars in Bangalore jumped from two million in April 2020 to 2.4 million by April this year. Last year it overtook Delhi, India's car-dependent capital, to become the city with the highest number of private cars in both absolute terms and relative to the population. Bangalore adds a new car to its streets roughly every four minutes.

All over India, a growing middle class is rushing out to buy the ultimate expression of individualism. The number of cars on India's streets rose from 19 million in 2012 to 49 million in 2022. Car ownership per 1,000 people doubled from 17 to 34 in the same period.

"The love affair with cars in India, at this moment, is at an all-time high," says Mr Hormazd Sorabjee, who drives a Porsche 718 Cayman GTS and is editor of Autocar India, a magazine. But as car ownership has become more common, what it means to own one has changed.

The first big shift is in what people are buying. Just five years ago, every second car sold in India was a hatchback. Today that is down to one in four, while more than 50 per cent of new sales are sport utility vehicles (SUVs), according to Hyundai Motor, a South Korean firm whose local arm in October raised US$3.3 billion (S$4.43 billion) in India's largest initial public offering.