I've been looking at a few motorcycles as upgrades from my GT - while I'm not really gonna upgrade but was just checking things out. While at it I found a bit startling & surprising thing which I'm not able to get my head around. i.e. How come RTO registration prices are different for similar type of bikes & different by a huge margin for the same state even when prices are quite close.

Now I'm using BikeWale as my reference here, so incase their data doesn't really match it'll be helpful if you correct it here.

Eg. one of the best examples is:- Location selected is Mumbai - wherever there was Sub-Area was asked I entered Kandivali(W).

Now both bikes are naked twins yes the binelli is 50cc more but how does one explain the 50% additional cost on RTO. Then in that case the Ninja 300 RTO cost is Rs.35,465! And the R3 RTO price is Rs.38,740 - which is still quite within same range.

Now comparing 2 cruisers

Again, here the RTO price difference doesn't really make much sense even though Aquilla is more expensive. Neither the fact that it's lower in cc than the HD750. So definitely something else is affecting this.

Again here Binelli seems substantially higher than others. Even the HyS GT650 is almost 18% higher which is quite high so to speak. Even again if we say that 600i is a 4cycliner the comparison with CBR650F doesn't really compute. Coz RTO for CBR650F is Rs.81,097 - a mind-numbing 36K less!

And what will really blow your bearings is that Kawasaki Z800 which is almost 50k higher in price, 150cc higher in CC, has about 18k lower RTO costs!!!

One consistent trend is Kawasaki has much lower registration costs compared to bikes priced cheaper! Which means that the popular explanation that RTO Cost = "Certain percent of the total cost" is definitely not true. This trend continues on even when you compare Triumphs, Ducatis & the likes.

Looking at all the different examples, there's definitely things other than "CC", type of Engine, No of Cylinders, type of Bike etc even price factor is negated. So what is it?? Does Euro/ARAI complaint have some role? CKD, CBU etc play a role? Or is it that Companies like Kawasaki (thanks to Bajaj) has negotiated a much cheaper rate for Registrations? and Companies like Binelli certainly have not done it that well - since it's consistently highest?.


Again I'm not taking about total price of on-road price I'm only discussing difference in "RTO Registration Cost" and nothing else.
The objective of this thread is simply academic - intellectual masturbation sort of cracking this code of how is it actually calculated which is consistent atleast across a segment.