NEW DELHI: India’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) on Wednesday, November 10, 2021, launched the updated version of its hatchback Celerio, priced between Rs 4.99 lakh and Rs 6.94 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi). The company claims that its new offering is the country’s most fuel-efficient petrol car as its new engine helps the model deliver a fuel efficiency of 26.68 km per litre. The manual variants of the car are priced between Rs 4.99 lakh and Rs 6.44 lakh while the AGS (auto gear shift) variants are tagged between Rs 6.13 lakh and Rs 6.94 lakh. The company will add CNG trim later to its Celerio portfolio.
MSIL Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Kenichi Ayukawa said that their engineers have achieved major fuel efficiency improvement ranging from 15 to 23% across variants over the outgoing Celerio. He added that in the following months, many other models will also be equipped with this next-generation K family engine.
To note, the company had stopped selling diesel-engine vehicles when India was moving away from BS4 emission norms early 2020. Maruti also sells a large number of CNG fitted PVs in India. Commenting on the current business environment, Ayukawa said the second quarter turned out to be another challenging period for the company because of the unprecedented global supply crisis of electronic components. He added that the company believes in India’s medium and long term growth story on the back of rapid vaccination and growing aspiration of consumers.
“While in terms of volume, we may still be much lower than our best of fiscal year 2018-19, but I am confident that together we will attain those levels,” Ayukawa said. MSIL chairman RC Bhargava had recently said that they will go ahead and finalise plans to set up of a Rs 18,000 crore new manufacturing facility in Haryana before the end of this calendar year.
Talking about Celerio, the hatchback is powered by the next generation K-Series Engine. It offers a torque of 89Nm@3500rpm and power of 49kW@5500RPM. MSI Senior Executive Director (Marketing and Sales) Shashank Srivastava said the model would help the company consolidate its position in the hatchback segment where it’s a leader with 66% market share.