My Kawasaki Ninja 500 price expectation may be unrealistic according to the company’s business flow, but I believe a product makes sense if it is here for selling and not just brand boosting!
So, Kawasaki has already teased its Ninja 500 and it will be launched in India sometime soon, most probably within this month, or sometime next month. It is obvious that it will replace the Ninja 400 but the next question is – what should be the price?
I checked the Kawasaki’s American website and surprisingly, the 500 is starting at a similar price as the 400 for both – the ABS as well as the non-ABS variant ($5299). It has a wider range of variants though and the window spans till $6599.
Because Kawasaki has recently launched the Eliminator in India (which is based on the similar 500 platform) we have an understanding of how could the Ninja 500 be priced. The 500 cruiser is roughly 25 percent costlier than the Ninja 500 in the USA. Extrapolating a similar percent gap, we land at the figure of roughly Rs 4.5 Lac.
That would be a lovely point of start for the Ninja 500 – bang in the territory of Aprilia RS457 (slight premium for that extra bit of power as well). This will also give it a nice gap with the localized Ninja 300 (which costs close to Rs 3.50 Lac). However, the Ninja 400 already costs Rs 5.24 Lac in India and chances of the 500 undercutting it by such a big margin are, well, extremely bleak!
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At a price tag of somewhere around Rs 4.5 Lac, the Ninja 500 makes up for a pretty nice option – that has the potential to sell in fairly good numbers. However, if it is priced around or over that Ninja 400’s insane 5.24 Lac moniker, Kawasaki is looking at yet another sales dud! The max Kawasaki should be looking at would be Rs 4.99 Lac and even then I do not see it selling in any respectable numbers.
I hope someone at Kawasaki wakes up, and smells the coffee!
