In one of the biggest announcements in the automobile industry, Maruti Suzuki has announced that it would be phasing out all its diesel cars from April 2020.
This has been forced on Maruti by the BS-VI emission norms, provisions of which are extremely stringent and existing diesel engines of Maruti will not be able to meet BS-VI standards.
Currently Maruti Suzuki offers two different diesel engines in its range – the Fiat sourced 1.3-litre multiJet engine and the new 1.5-litre, four-cylinder DDiS engine which powers the Ciaz. Both these engines will be phased out and there will be no diesel variant of any Maruti car from April next year.
At present diesel cars constitute 30 percent of all Maruti’s sales volume and it would be interesting to see how Maruti manages to completely eliminate them from its offerings without taking a big hit.
