Maruti Suzuki India on Monday said it is extending CNG fuel option to vehicles sold under premium retail chain Nexa as it targets nearly 75 per cent jump in sales of CNG vehicles at 4 lakh units this fiscal.
According to Senior Executive Director (Marketing & Sales) Shashank Srivastava, the company is introducing 'S-CNG' option to its premium hatchback Baleno and multi-purpose vehicle XL6 with prices ranging between Rs 8.28 lakh and Rs 12.24 lakh.
"This year, we should be selling close to 4 lakh CNG cars as against 2.3 lakh cars that we sold last year," Srivastava said in an interaction.
Since introducing the CNG technology in 2010 with three models, Eeco, Alto and WagonR, he said, the company has "so far sold 1.14 million CNG vehicles" in total.
"Today we have 10 out of the total of 16 models (that the company sells) which have the CNG," Srivastava said, adding that with the two new models the MSIL's CNG offering will go up to 12 models.
On the Baleno and XL6 CNG options, he said production has already started and "we will be starting the sale in the first week of November".
The Baleno S-CNG will be available in two variants. Delta, manual transmission (MT) to be priced at Rs 8.28 lakh and Zeta (MT) tagged at Rs 9.21 lakh, while the XL6 S-CNG will be available only on Zeta (MT) variant at Rs 12.24 lakh (all prices ex-showroom).
The introduction of CNG vehicles in Nexa channel is something which, he said, MSIL has been debating internally for a long time but on the basis of a research done on Nexa customers it has decided to introduce the option.
"They had indicated that it's not just a matter of running cost, but it's also that the CNG is a very clean technology," Srivastava said.
When asked about sales expectations from the two new CNG options, he said, "Nexa typically gives about 20 per cent of overall Maruti Suzuki volumes. However, CNG has not been present in Nexa. It is now coming in Baleno, which is around 60 per cent of the total Nexa volumes. So I would expect a good percentage of Baleno S-CNG volumes."
Citing the example of the company's other popular hatchback Swift, on which it introduced the CNG option in August, Srivastava said the penetration currently is around 14-15 per cent and the expectation is for a similar level for the Baleno CNG.
On the overall demand for CNG vehicles, he said the average bookings per day last year was about 1,300-1,400 and it went up slightly in the first quarter of this fiscal to 1,400 to 1,500 range.
"Subsequent to the increases in the CNG prices it has come back to the same level as last year, which is about 1,300 to 1,400 range per day and it has remained constant there," Srivastava added.
In terms of order book for CNG vehicles, he said, "As of today pending bookings for CNG vehicles is about 1.23 lakh units."
The unavailability of CNG controller semiconductor along with certain other components related to the technology led to long waiting period for CNG vehicles, which ranged from a week for WagonR CNG to about eight to nine months for Ertiga CNG which has the highest pending order of 72,000 units, he added.
However, he said MSIL has ramped up production to around 30,000-32,000 units per month for the CNG vehicles from about 15,000-16,000 units per month last year in order to accelerate their penetration in the company's overall portfolio.
