Over 60k Diesel cars were sold in India since April 2020. Hyundai, Mahindra & Kia have emerged as the biggest diesel car manufacturers in the BS6 era!
It was predicted that diesel cars will be history post the implementation of BS6 emission norms. Many OEMs even gave away diesels entire from their portfolio owing to increased R&D costs and implementation hurdles. The likes of Maruti, Renault, Nissan, VW & Skoda are now petrol-only car manufacturers! The trend to be seen here is the rampant acceptance of Petrol engines – Manufacturers like Mahindra & Toyota have pretty decent sales coming in from the petrol variants. The thinning price gap between Petrol & Diesel fuel cost have also been a major factor in this shift. Across all metropolitan cities in India; the price gap between both the fuel have been <Rs.10 and consumers aren’t completely ready to pay the higher price of diesel cars during their purchase.
Fuel Price Comparison (as of 1 Sep) – CityPetrolDieselGapDelhi82.873.69.2Mumbai88.780.18.6Kolkata83.6776.6Bangalore84.477.96.5
Maruti is at a larger risk if the consumer shift towards petrol doesn’t happen as anticipated. Do note that over 22% of the Maruti’s sold in 2019 were Diesels! (Source) Hence, Maruti is doing everything possible to influence consumers to prefer Petrol cars over Diesel. It is also running a mega campaign ‘Calculate Kiya Kya’ highlighting the period required to recover the initial acquisition cost of buying a Diesel car.
Maruti’s Diesel multijet had a huge fan following and the departure of the engine from Maruti’s portfolio is risky for sure! However; Maruti sales hasn’t affected much post BS6/Covid era as the petrol acceptance in hatchback/compact sedans is on a rise due to the initial low acquisition cost.
This leaves an opportunity in the hands of the OEMs having a BS6 Diesel engine options. Irrespective of the price difference; there is still a large set of buyers who have opted for the pricier Diesel cars in the Mid SUV segment / Premium segment. Frequent long distance travel, punchier diesel engine and better driveability were the primary reasons for the customers opting for the Diesel variants in the segment. Hyundai & Kia emerged as the biggest beneficiaries. Both OEMs combined sold over 45% of the diesel driven cars between Apr-July 2020! Let us see the OEM wise Petrol v/s Diesel Sales Trend for April – July 2020 –
*Hybrid
Around 60,283 diesel cars were sold out of the overall passenger vehicle sales of 3,51,141 units. The diesel contribution was over 17% in the overall PV sales.
Petrol Driven cars now dominate over 82% of the Passenger Car Sales and has moved up from 66.9% contribution in 2019 (source). Obviously; the trend is led by the Market Leader Maruti Suzuki.
Toyota has the highest dependence on diesel cars; and is now followed by Ford & Mahindra. The OEM-wise diesel dependency is as ranked in order –RankOEMDiesel%1Toyota69.3%2Ford64.5%3Mahindra59.0%4FCA53.3%5Kia46.1%6MG41.5%7Hyundai29.0%8Honda18.8%9Tata12.7%10Maruti0.0%11Renault0.0%12VW0.0%13Skoda0.0%14Nissan0.0%
Will Petrol cars dominance rise with time; or else Diesel car sales are going to rise against all odds? Only time shall tell.
Note: The statistics shown here is collated from multiple sources and may not be exactly accurate.