Maruti Suzuki goes ahead with the development of its new 1.5 L diesel engine for mid-size vehicles despite the decreasing buying sentiments for diesel variants
Maruti Suzuki is India’s largest car manufacturer in volumes and the company is currently sourcing diesel engines from Fiat. Now, the company is developing a new 1.5 L diesel engine in-house and is expected to make its debut next year.
But the future of diesel-powered cars is not looking good as the government has already introduced several new norms like the ban of 10-year diesel car to reduce pollution as they are more harmful to the environment than petrol engines. During an Interview with ET, Kenichi Ayukawa, MD of Maruti Suzuki confirmed that they are going ahead with the development of its new diesel engine.
He said that the new diesel engine is for future mid-size cars and some reports earlier have indicated that future small cars from Maruti will be offered with petrol engines as diesel will be available in bigger cars only. The current share of diesel cars is 30 per for Maruti Suzuki, which is very low as most of the customers in the volume segment prefer petrol models.
The market share of diesel cars is expected to continue going down in coming years as the upcoming BSVI emission will make them expensive as manufacturers need to make lots of changes for the current engines to meet the new BSVI norms. Ayukawa has also confirmed that the company is planning to make every model BSVI complaint three months before the deadline, which is April 2020.
The company needs to manage stock also and they are working with sales and marketing team to manage the switch from BSIV to BSVI as smooth as possible and we have all seen the chaos during the BSIII to BSIV deadline for two-wheeler manufacturers but the decision has been taken in advance, so the company has some time to work out everything.
Maruti Suzuki will continue with the new Gujarat plant project as they are expecting sales to pick up after the implementation of BSVI norms, as the lack of reason for current growth is because of the delay of new launches along with rising fuel prices and depreciation of rupee. The company is also working on electric and hybrid models as they have already started testing of Wagon R EV earlier this year in India.