the festive season which usually witnesses a spike in automobile sales begins this year on august 11 with rakshabandhan stretching up to diwali on october 25the auto industry expects car sales to be on the fast lane this festive season on the back of new launches and improved production but is cautiously optimistic on the road ahead once the festivities peter out the festive season which usually witnesses a spike in automobile sales begins this year on august 11 with rakshabandhan stretching up to diwali on october 25 we expect the festive season this year to be the best in terms of passenger vehicle sales on the back of new launches and improved production activity the industry has been rolling out over 3 lakh units on an average in the past 45 months which is helping in retails automobile dealers body president vinkesh gulati told pti in an interaction advt he listed erratic monsoon in some parts of the country inflationary pressures and the looming threat of a chinataiwan war as some of the challenges to watch out for in the days ahead fada represents over 15000 automobile dealers across the country kia india vice president and head of sales marketing hardeep singh brar said that supply chain issues are now showing signs of easing off and market sentiments remain bullish we are optimistic that a good festive season is ahead of us in terms of sales he added tata motors president passenger vehicle and electric vehicles shailesh chandra said the company does not see a concern regarding the customer demand until the end of the festive season in an analyst call he said that the automaker expects the vehicle supply to improve with better semiconductor availability in the second quarter going forward the challenges we see is that the high inflation and interest rate may start impacting the auto demand while theres no stress as far as the second quarter is concerned he stated as far as tata motors is concerned the company remains focused on demand generation activities chandra noted maruti suzuki india senior executive director marketing and sales shashank srivastava said the demand seems to be steady at the moment we have to watch out for the retails currently we are digging conclusions based on wholesales and on the pending bookingsretail sales have been less than wholesales for the last few months we also need to see how the economy performs overall and how the inflation and interest rates move he noted advt customer sentiment can witness change on account of these factors he said elaborating on the overall performance of the industry he stated that in the apriljuly period this fiscal the passenger vehicle industry has witnessed a growth of 33 per cent over the same period last financial year the pv sector has sold 1253 lakh units this year as compared with 941 lakh units last year srivastava said he noted that at the beginning of april the industry stock was estimated to be