Indo-Japanese car giant Maruti Suzuki has said that they will discontinue the diesel engines from their line-up by April 2020. The reason for this is that the new BSVI compliant engines will be significantly expensive and repel customers from buying their diesel cars, as the manufacturing costs are higher to develop these engines with stricter norms. Currently, Maruti Suzuki offers the following cars with diesel engines:-
- Swift hatchback
- Baleno hatchback
- Dzire compact-sedan
- Ciaz sedan
- Vitara Brezza compact-SUV
- S-Cross crossover
- Ertiga MPV
- Super Carry LCV
Maruti Suzuki is most likely to stop selling diesel variants only in small cars as the bigger diesel cars may still have a sizeable market share. Maruti Suzuki has recently spent more than INR 1,000 crore for indigenous development of the new 1.5-litre DOHC DDiS 225 engine which produces 93.8 HP of power @ 4000 RPM and 225 Nm of torque @ 1500-2500 RPM which has a best in class fuel efficiency. This engine which was introduced recently is obviously worked keeping in mind the upcoming BSVI norms. So rumours suggesting Maruti Suzuki will stop sale of all diesel engine cars makes no sense.
Maruti may stop production of the older Fiat-sourced 1.3 DDiS 200 within this year so the dealerships can clear stocks before April 2020 when the new BSVI emission norms will be enforced. Maruti Suzuki is more likely to replace the 1.3-litre DDiS with the new 1.5-litre DDiS engine reworked to be BSVI compliant.
The two models Vitara Brezza and S-Cross are only offered in diesel variants and Maruti Suzuki will have to rethink about the SUV segment and bring the new 1.5-litre diesel engine currently on the Ciaz with new BSVI standards. And for sure this will happen, and both the S-Cross and Vitara Brezza sell in decent numbers. Listening to the rumours, do you think Maruti Suzuki will kill these brands and let these many sales numbers go to competition? Of course not!
The price gap between the new costlier BSVI diesel engine and petrol engine is expected to be kept in check otherwise it will repel customers as the price gap between the two fuels has already narrowed which has moved many towards the petrol option.