By: Varun Singh
Upbeat about growth of the CNG segment, Maruti Suzuki India expects CNG vehicles to contribute more than 20% to its overall sales in the near future as the country’s largest carmaker gears up to bolster its CNG portfolio by adding three to four models in the coming months, said a senior company official.
While the contribution of CNG-powered models in the overall passenger vehicle (PV) sales in the country is about 8%, their share in Maruti Suzuki India’s total sales is close to 15% at present.
Maruti Suzuki India sold around 1.06 lakh CNG vehicles in FY20. Their sales increased to 1.63 lakh units in FY21. In the current fiscal, the company is looking to sell nearly 2.40 lakh CNG vehicles, with 1.5 lakh units already sold till the end of December 2021.
“CNG segment at the moment appears to be going strong and will continue to grow for the next few years. As we increase our CNG portfolio, we expect it to contribute over 20% to our sales in the near future,” Shashank Srivastava, senior executive director, marketing and sales, Maruti Suzuki India, told FE in an interaction.
“At Maruti Suzuki, we have the maximum number of factory-fitted CNG vehicles, wherein eight of our brands have CNG variants and we have almost 85% of the CNG market in the industry. In these eight brands, the penetration of CNG is close to 30%,” he added.
Maruti Suzuki India currently sells 14 PV and two cargo carrier models. Its vehicles such as Alto, S-Presso, Eeco, Celerio, WagonR, Ertiga, Super Carry and Tour S come with a factory-fitted CNG kit option. In January, the company launched the CNG variant of the new Celerio priced at Rs 6.58 lakh (ex-showroom). “We have launched all-new Celerio CNG and we will be adding three to four more models in CNG in the coming months,” Srivastava said. However, he neither named the vehicles that will get a CNG option nor mentioned the exact months of their launch.
Maruti Suzuki India retails nearly 25,000 CNG cars every month at present. It has around 1.15 lakh pending bookings for CNG models as of now. At the end of the December 2021 quarter, the company had more than 2.40 lakh overall pending bookings, including for petrol-powered and CNG-powered vehicles.
Claiming that the CNG segment is here to stay, Srivastava said high prices of both diesel and petrol bring the running cost of those vehicles approximately to Rs 5.20 per kilometre, whereas for CNG cars it is Rs 1.70 per kilometre, making them more fuel-efficient and easier on the pocket.
He also noted that the number of CNG stations have increased and they are covering a larger number of cities. “Earlier, the number of cities covered were just about 120 or so and we had just 1,400 CNG pumps in the country. Today, we have about 3,500 pumps across 250 cities and in a few years, they are to go up to 10,000 covering about 330 cities,” Srivastava said.
“Better availability of CNG infrastructure will facilitate the growth of CNG segment in the industry,” he added.
