Imports Vehicles Become Bespoke

Khodrocar – Increasing automobile industry mandatory standard factors to 85 seemed a giant step to take right from the beginning. While the government’s insistence over executing the newly stablished standards will cause troubles for import vehicles.

The recently stablished mandatory standards of Iran automobile industry now includes some of the commendatory standards of European automobile industry therefore causing serious problems for vehicle import corporations, though now most of the global import vehicles now cannot pass the recent standards because some of them are now not mandatory off shore yet.

Foreign car makers are capable of handling these new standard regulations but they might not be willing to process them through execution phases for the small market share of Iran, at least not just yet as they require a huge deal of investments. The results of such mess is going to be huge ban of import for most of foreign brands and especially worse problems for foreign auto makers in joint venture with Iranian car manufacturers as they need to be more specifically altered from various viewpoints.

"Almost all vehicle importers are now struggling with new standard factors as their mother factories are not ready yet to execute them of their products just yet, especially bringing the huge load of money in to account that they require to be executed.” Said Aghil Mostafaei, an automobile industry expert regarding import vehicle companies troubles toward recently stablished mandatory vehicles standard factors.

"It is not true to say that passing all 85 standard factors are impossible because there are car import companies out there that has just passed them. Although it is bound to the mother company to go through the alterations and also the importer to be willing to put a huge fund into it. What seems impossible is for import car makers to be able to pass these standards.” He added.

"The mother company is bound to support such alterations as a part of homologation and marketing of brand in target country but at the same time it has to consider its market share in that country and see if the expenses worth their market share in that country.” Said Mostafaei.

The expert believes that "Both ends of the story need to cooperate 50-50 to make these standards to become executed smoothly. It means that car importers must take their chances negotiating their mother companies to convince them to support the standard alterations and at the same time, Iran national standard organization must set some separating levels to distinct vehicles produced in different countries with different levels of safety and price tag and not just evaluating them inly with difficult European measures. Because not being from Europe, Japan or USA does not mean the vehicle is bad or poor in safety.”

Mostafaei also includes the probable changes in vehicles final price tags after they have gone through new standard: "Executing these standards puts some monetary pressure over mother companies’ shoulders therefore will be affecting the final price tag. But the level of increment in the final price of the vehicles depends on each company’s market share, the nature of the target market and the production volume of the vehicle.”

Khodrocar Journalist: Mostafa Anisi