Diesels out, Maruti drives in smart, affordable hybrids

New Delhi | Mumbai: Maruti Suzuki is banking on affordable green vehicles including those running on compressed natural gas (CNG) and on hybrid technology to drive in volumes and cut emissions over the next few years. India’s biggest carmaker will stop sale of its diesel cars from April 2020.

The company is eyeing sales of a million green vehicles mid-term, with nearly half of these volumes coming from CNG options, said sources in the know. It expects sales of additional 250,000-300,000 units from 48 volt smart hybrids, which will emerge as an alternative to diesel vehicles. The remaining volumes will come from stronger parallel hybrids and electric vehicles.

Maruti Suzuki MD Kenichi Ayukawa told ET some time ago that while electrification will take time, the company has a slew of technologies on offer to reduce dependence on imported oil and cut down vehicular pollution. “We have CNG, we have strong and mild hyrbids, depending on the product we have to select the technology,” Ayukawa said.

The company, which has eight CNG models currently, has already commenced work to make all small cars in its portfolio available in the fuel option, going forward. Maruti Suzuki also has plans to bring to the market the parallel hybrid technology developed by parent Suzuki Motor Corporation (SMC).

The company recently showcased the parallel hybrid system on hatchback Swift, which delivers higher fuel efficiency of 32 kmpl.

Ayukawa said “We are planning to bring in parallel hybrids (to India), we have the hybrid system, point is localisation.” At present, it has 5 vehicles with the smart hybrid tech.

Not only are these vehicles that it plans to bring to the market cleaner and greener, they do not come with a major sticker shock on price, allowing Maruti Suzuki to retain its edge in terms of both fuel efficiency and affordability in the face of rising competition. The move, additionally, will help the company reduce about one million tonne of CO2 emission as major cities continue to suffer from extremely poor air quality.

“What took a decade for the company to deliver, it wants to now do it in three years, sell one million cleaner vehicles and ‘affordability’ is at the core of it”, said a senior industry executive, aware of the company’s plans, said on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, CNG-powered vehicles already constitute 9% of overall sales of the company. In states where CNG distribution outlets are available, variants running on the fuel account for up to 70-75% of the sales of the model. Over 1950 CNG stations are present across 18 states and threeUTs, with major concentration in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad.

Shashank Srivastava, executive director, marketing and sales, Maruti Suzuki said. “Running cost of CNG is less than diesel. In Pune, 71% of sales of WagonR come from CNG. Penetration is very high. The question is not the acceptance of CNG, but the availability of CNG.”