Maruti Refuses To Make Diesel Cars Due To This Reason; Petrol CNG Primary Focus Now!

Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) will no longer produce diesel vehicles since it believes its sales will dwindle when 2023 emission norms come into effect.

Decline In Popularity

Due to the upcoming emission norms, the automaker believes that costs of producing diesel cars will go up which will hinder sales.

Over the last few years, market sentiment has seen a gradual shift towards petrol cars.

The current share of diesel vehicles in the market is less than 17%, a big decline from 2013-14 when the figure stood at 60%.

Shifting Focus

Several other brands in India have already pulled diesel trims from their respective portfolios with the onset of the BS-VI emission regime from April 1, 2020.

Currently, MSI’s entire range is powered by BS-VI compliant 1 litre, 1.2 litre and 1.5 litre gasoline engines. 

It also offers CNG trims across seven of its models.

The company will shift its focus to its petrol powertrains in terms of fuel efficiency.

Improving Fuel Efficiency

One such improvement it has made is with the new K10-C engine in Celerio.

“From a fuel efficiency perspective, we will improve our internal combustion engine technology,” said MSI Chief Technical Officer C V Raman.

It claims that the latest version of the Celerio has fuel efficiency of 26.68 km/litre, the highest for any petrol-powered car in India.

In the future, it could also explore a new family of engines to power its product portfolio.

Ethanol Compliance

On the matter of other alternate fuels, he said that they are already ethanol 10% (E10) compliant and from 2023 onwards E20 will be made available as per the fuel availability.

He said that they are not sure about when it will be available and its pricing but will conduct studies to determine that. 

“Such engines require certain lead time for development and customer acceptance is also a factor,” Raman said.