Former senior primetime news anchor, financial correspondent, producer, and Chief Editor-Auto – Siddharth has worn many hats during his many years at NDTV. He conceived all the automobile based content for the NDTV network - including the annual carandbike Awards, and used to head the Auto Prime band of programming launched in 2014. He was a key driver behind carandbike.com – already the country's 2nd largest auto portal. Siddharth also created India’s biggest auto quiz, which ran for 7 seasons – the Mahindra AQ. Besides all this, Siddharth is the first Asian journalist to be appointed as a Director on the Steering Committee for the prestigious World Car Awards in 2016. He has served on that jury since 2011, and is now Executive Director of World Car Awards since 2020. He is also Editor-in-Chief of carandbike.
The Hyundai Kona EV is quite simply the electric avatar of Hyundai's hit compact SUV - the Kona. We got to drive the new electric SUV in its home market, Korea, and here's our review.
The new Renault Duster will have a modern engine lineup with likely smaller turbocharged offerings - which will not only meet global emission standards for 2023, but also have a slew of transmission options - auto/CVT and manual - tied to it.
We got to spend a day with the new third-generation Mercedes-Benz GLS SUV in Utah, USA. It's bigger, better, bolder, and way more capable than the car it replaces. Read out entire review here.
Driving the Hyundai Nexo is somewhat like driving the future. Here's our road test review of the first hydrogen-powered fuel cell driven model from Hyundai Group and it's promising, engaging and pretty impressive.
Kia Motors' global CEO H W Park has told us exclusively that Kia will aim for an aggressive start to it India operations with 5 new models for India - one every 6 six months - by 2021. The company will also aim to achieve 3 lakh unit sales annually by the same time frame.
The Mercedes-Benz EQC is the first of what promises to be several EQ models from the German carmaker. It is a good step in the right direction, combining electric expectations with the kind of practicality, comfort and luxury that Mercedes buyers would expect.
Affordable performance is the promise of the Hyundai N range of cars. Hyundai is set to introduce N and N-Line cars to India in 2020.
We pit the newest subcompact SUV in the market, Hyundai Venue, against it two key rivals in the market, Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza and Mahindra XUV300.
The Hyundai Venue subcompact SUV has already garnered over 20,000 bookings and the juggernaut looks set to roll on. The reason for the popularity says Hyundai is the segment itself - which already accounts for 47 per cent of all SUV sales, and is set to go past 50 per cent in a year or two.
The much-discussed petrol version of the Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza will launch in Q4 of 2019-20. The new Vitara Brezza will be powered by a 1.2 litre petrol motor and will offer manual and AMT variants, and will be Bharat Stage 6 or BS6 compliant. It will also usher in the facelift for the car.
We recently had the chance to get behind the wheel of a pre-production model at a press event held in Korea at Hyundai Motor's Namyang R&D facility. The car is really compact, and yet - just as we have seen on its debut stage - even in real world conditions its proportions scream SUV.
Sources close to the company have confirmed that the long-wheelbase Volkswagen Tiguan Allspace will be coming to India this year. Globally, the SUV was introduced in 2016.
The second generation Duster uses a modified version of the Duster's B0 platform. The car that was launched in Europe, meets certain regulations largely seen as Europe-centric, and so not as relevant to India. It would therefore need significant investments to productionise here.
The Maruti Suzuki Alto 800 is also set to receive similar updates in a few days.
Sources in Europe have shared with carandbike that the Volkswagen T-Roc will be imported under the Indian government's scheme that allows 2500 units to be imported without local homologation.
The latest from BMW is the M850i xDrive. We test the car in sunny Portugal with the top down to get you a comprehensive perspective on the new 8 family. India will be getting the 4-door 8 Series Gran Coupe but it will share its dynamics and performance, styling and equipment with this car; and its engines too.
The car's second row will fold forwards to allow access to the third row of course. The Triber's taller roof height and wide crossover-like proportions will allow for that access, while also giving Renault the chance to pitch the car as dare I say - a Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza rival?
TomTom plans to develop the product further both in terms of offering even more layers of sophistication, and also see if it can be offered in standalone navigation devices or as a phone app. But there is another potential area where it could be even more relevant.
BMW's new flagship SUV is the first-ever X7. The model finally gives BMW its much-needed standard three-row car, offering new levels of luxury, space and comfort that was so far only seen on BMW's sedan portfolio only until now. We test the new model in the United States - which without a doubt is the number one target market for the BMW X7. We have driven the xDrive40i - which is confirmed as one of two variants we can expect in India.
The H2X concept based subcompact micro-SUV (being billed as the Hornbill) that will launch in 2020 will also b based on Alfa. And the next generations of the Tiago hatch and Tigor subcompact sedan will also move to the same platform.
