American car manufacturer Ford will continue sales of their diesel line up as the diesel engines will be upgraded to the BSVI emission standards and will be ready by April 2020 when the norms are going to be enforced. This will enable Ford to continue with the sales of their diesel cars along with BSVI compliant petrol powered cars.
Currently, Ford sells three diesel engine variants, a 1.5-litre, 4-cylinder unit which powers the Ford Figo hatchback and the Ford Figo Aspire compact sedan and the mid-size SUV Ford EcoSport. The larger 2.2-litre, 4-cylinder and the 3.2-litre, 5-cylinder engines power the Ford Endeavour.
Ford EcoSport diesel has a demand of almost 65% and Ford predicts that the demand will continue post the new BSVI norms and hence Ford wants to continue the production and sales of their diesel engines.
The shift to the stricter BSVI emission norms has put many car makers on the back foot and many are planning to drop their smaller diesel engines out of production as it will be difficult to develop a new engine to meet the new regulations and keep the cost in check for the smaller capacity engines.
One such report came from Maruti Suzuki India when they announced that they will phase out the diesel engines from production by 2020. However, the company only plans to upgrade depending on demand, like their 1.5-litre diesel engine to BSVI compliance as the small diesel cars will be very expensive and the price gap will not be maintained at a reasonable level.
Ford has also launched its first CNG model, the Ford Aspire CNG, for customers who want to shift from the small capacity diesel engines.
In recent news, we covered the Ford-Mahindra joint venture and how they plan to jointly develop an all-new SUV. The all-new SUV is expected to be based on the new Mahindra XUV500 platform and is expected to have a 2-litre, BSVI compliant engine. The new SUV is expected to debut around 2020.