With a staggering demand in the automobile market of India for diesel powered vehicles because of the ever escalating prices of petrol, the automobile manufacturers are now putting in double efforts to make a shift from petrol to diesel based vehicles as early as possible. But this sudden rise in the price of petrol and the consequent shift in the choice of customers have already made many car manufacturers bleed badly, while many have made huge profits as they sold diesel vehicles. Now, since Maruti Suzuki doesn’t have a diesel engine in its line-up, so it turned to Fiat and has been sourcing the MultiJet diesel engine for few of its prime vehicle models. Although Maruti brought diesel cars to the market, but the sales still went downwards as there were no diesel versions of Wagon R, EECO and Alto. So these three cars have been suffering a big loss in terms of sales.
Although Maruti has already made an effort to bring in vehicles, which run on alternative fuel like LPG (liquid petroleum gas) and CNG (compressed natural gas) to increase its volume of sales but it didn’t quite work out because the government was not very supportive of it and the current MultiJet diesel engine is just too big for these compact cars. Hence it’s high time for Maruti to bring in a compact diesel engine that could lessen the firm’s dependence on Fiat. Maruti has already put in Rs 900 crore in the development of a new diesel engine facility at Rohtak, Haryana. The firm intends to come up with a 1.0-liter, three-cylinder diesel engine at the earliest so it could use that beneath the bonnet of the aforementioned cars. Other than these two options, Maruti can also source Smartech 1.0-liter SDSE diesel engine from the General Motors India for its cars.
Developed at the General Motor India’s Powertrain facility at Bangalore, this particular Smartech engine is not at all different from the MultiJet diesel engine of Fiat since both are manufactured on the same principal except the former has one-cylinder less in its structure. Currently Chevrolet Beat Diesel is running on this Smartech diesel engine of General Motors, thus it can be easily assumed that it could power the compact cars of Maruti, especially the Maruti Wagon R, in the near future. In this manner Maruti Suzuki India would be saved completely from putting in their effort, time and money to construct a small diesel engine on their own.
The latest news of the block is that Tata Motors is working day and night on a new diesel engine, which they are developing for their Nano. This engine is said to give a mileage of 35 kmpl to 40 kmpl as per the ARAI testing. If that happens then Maruti Suzuki India will have a very tough competition in its hand. Moreover, other diesel compact cars will also face the wrath of this super mileage low price car’s introduction to the market. Most of the people would like to opt for a car which has low price, high mileage, less maintenance and of course, takes very less space to park as in the metropolitan cities parking space is costlier than a luxurious sedan. So let’s keep our fingers crossed for this attempt of Maruti which could revolutionize the diesel vehicle market of India.