Maruti Suzuki has decided to stop offering diesel engines across the line-up by March 2020, and the Super Carry, its only commercial vehicle, is no exception. BS-VI upgrade is proving to be very costly for diesel engines, especially for the small units that are used in low-cost vehicles like the Super Carry.
The Maruti Suzuki Super Carry was introduced in July 2016 and launched in September the same year. It is sold through exclusive sales channel for commercial vehicles, and there were 250 such outlets in the country as of November 2018. At that time, the cumulative sales had crossed 20,000 units. With 900 units sold in FY2016-17, 10,033 in FY2017-18 and 23,874 in FY2018-19, the latest count is 34,807 units.
"Our judgement is that a BS6 diesel LCV with a small engine, the cost increase of upgrading it to BS6 is too high and we intend to discontinue the diesel version of this LCV," R C Bhargava, Chairman, Maruti Suzuki, said yesterday. "There will be no diesel on this LCV because we don't think we can meet the cost target for customer requirements of this vehicle," he added. The diesel engine in question is the E08 793 cc two-cylinder unit which generates 24 kW (32.63 PS) at 3,500 rpm and 75 Nm of torque at 2,000 rpm. It comes mated to a 5-speed manual transmission. The fuel economy rating in this configuration is 22.07 km/l.
Maruti Suzuki manufactures the Super Carry with the G12B 1.2-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that produces 54 kW (73.42 PS) and 101 Nm of torque also, but not for the domestic market. Here, we get only the petrol-CNG version of this engine that develops 48 kW (65.26 PS) and 85 Nm of torque running on CNG. That's about to change, though. "We will have a petrol and a CNG variant of this vehicle because we think that the petrol and the CNG versions will actually become more economically viable," Bhargava said.
Also Read: Global all-new Suzuki Carry with K15B-C engine breaks cover at IIMS 2019
The Suzuki Super Carry competes with the Tata Motors Ace, Ashok Leyland Dost and Mahindra Supro in the domestic market.
[Source: auto.ndtv.com]
