2023 Hyundai Verna - Expected Vs Actual Prices | V3Cars

You can read about our Verna’s price estimations at the following link:

Next-Gen Hyundai Verna 2023 - Variant-Wise Price Estimation

Estimating The Starting Price

Hyundai didn’t reveal the brochure of the Verna 2023 ahead of the price announcement. So, we didn’t know exactly what features the Verna’s base EX petrol-manual variant was going to offer and which ones it was going to skip. While the feature list doesn’t clearly communicate exactly what starting price point we should expect, it gives us a hint at the product positioning.

Based on the information available to us at the time of publishing the new Verna’s expected prices, we were expecting that the Verna EX could carry a premium positioning among C2-segment sedans. Historically, Hyundai have always positioned their products as a premium alternative in their respective segments even if it fails to impress on the sales charts. The i20 and Santro are prime examples of this. The i20 is not the segment leader in its class by any stretch but Hyundai are satisfied with its decent numbers as long as it is looked up to as an upmarket hatchback next to the Baleno and Altroz.

Similarly, the Santro, in its latest generation, began its journey, with what I’d call, overpriced tags for all of its variants. It cost Hyundai the entire car as it wasn’t delivering the kind of profits the management expected and they discontinued it. Even at this immense cost, Hyundai never played the price war. They’d rather pay the price than dilute their brand positioning.

This time, however, the effect of Honda City’s value pricing is apparent. Honda’s decision to include advanced driver assistance features (ADAS) in almost all variants makes the City come across as a solid value product. Honda are democratising the ADAS and even offering adaptive cruise control with the manual transmission in the V variant. This move will keep Honda ahead of the curve as they gather more data from the cars sold and improve the effectiveness of their ADAS for all cars.

To prevent this from happening, Hyundai seem to have brought the Verna with a value price tag. Having a considerably lower starting price than the competition also means they have to price their subsequent variants with justifiable gaps for the incremental features they add. This, Hyundai certainly did. We can see this value card hitting it hard in their S and SX variants as well as their turbo petrol variants. While Honda are playing the ADAS game, Hyundai are happy to offer the classic features at a mouth-watering price in the S and SX variants.

For the base variant of the Hyundai Verna, our prices were off by about Rs. 40,000, or 3.68 percent. Given that we didn’t have the detailed feature list of the car, I’d say I got as good as I could. But whether to give me a passing grade or not remains in your hands.

Higher Variants Price Estimates

From there, the error gap increases to 4.56% for the S variant and 7.82% for the SX variant. My estimates for the SX petrol-manual and petrol-automatic variants were embarrassingly off and stand at 7.82% and 8.89%, respectively. It’s not surprising then, that the SX normal petrol and automatic variants earned our top recommendation for Hyundai Verna buyers. You can read more about the variant-wise feature breakdown and buying recommendations for the Verna at the following link:

Hyundai Verna Petrol Variants Explained - Which One To Buy?

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One Right, One Wrong And Everything In Between

Considering that my base starting price itself was around 4% off, my estimates for all of the other variants also ended up maintaining a similar distance from the actual Verna 2023 launch prices.

One of my educated guesses that went right was that Hyundai’s ADAS isn’t ready for prime time. That’s why, they’re reserving it for the top-spec SX (O) variant. Moreover, adaptive cruise control, which is the most useful ADAS feature for expressway cruising, isn't available in the SX (O) variant unless you pay some more cash for the turbo petrol-automatic powertrain. This further shields Hyundai from any potential bad press if it ends up disappointing their customers. This is because with such feature distribution, they’ll have a very small number of customers actually using the feature in the first place.

On the other hand, one of my guesses which went horribly wrong was that Hyundai would offer the ADAS only with the automatic transmission. Hyundai added several ADAS features to the SX (O) turbo petrol-manual, making it come across as a value offering for buyers who want some gear-shifting engagement in their drives.

Hyundai Verna Manual Vs Automatic Vs Turbo Price Comparison

Here’s a quick look at the Hyundai Verna’s launch prices along with a comparison between manual and automatic variants and normal petrol and turbo petrol variants:

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