My budget is under ₹10 lakh, and I am planning to buy a CNG car. My usage will be evenly split between city/village driving and highway travel, roughly 50:50. Could you please suggest the best options considering fuel efficiency, reliability, comfort, performance, maintenance costs, and suitability for mixed road conditions?

Autocar India

•4h

Instead of your take-home salary, it would be better to help us with the budget you are comfortable allocating for your new car purchase, because several factors affect your capacity to spend like age, responsibilities, existing liabilities, etc.Assuming you plan to sell your outgoing Alto 800 and use the sales proceeds as a down payment, with an EMI of around Rs 15,000, you could look at cars with an on-road price of Rs 8.50-9 lakh. For the money, you could consider a Maruti Baleno or Toyota Glanza, both of which will feel like a proper upgrade compared to your outgoing car. SUV alternatives are the Tata Punch and Hyundai Exter, and if you prefer a sedan, the Maruti Dzire is also a good buy.

Maruti Suzuki Baleno

Tata Punch

Hyundai Exter

Toyota Glanza

Autocar India

•1d

Given your high level of driving, with mostly highway usage, good fuel economy must be a high priority. The best answer would be a diesel or a hybrid, but neither of those will fit in your budget of Rs 5-10 lakh. A good option worth considering might be a used diesel SUV like a Gen 1 Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza diesel or Gen 1 Hyundai Creta diesel. If well-maintained and in good condition, these would be good upgrades from your Celerio CNG, and you should be able to find examples in your budget.However, if you would like to stick to a new car, do not discount CNG entirely. There are plenty of new CNG models that use twin-cylinder setups to reduce the impact on boot space. Good options that fall in your budget are the Tata Punch i-CNG and the Hyundai Exter Hy-CNG Duo, both of which have reasonably sized boots, despite the use of CNG tanks.

Tata Punch

Hyundai Exter

Autocar India

•3d

We would suggest the Honda Amaze CVT as the primary pick. Since you already have a large SUV, this second car’s job is to be an easy, fuss-free city runabout, and the Amaze fits that brief really well. It gives you a proper automatic rather than an AMT, so smoothness in stop-and-go traffic is far better, and the latest Amaze has a 5-star Bharat NCAP safety rating, making it a strong fit given your safety priority.If you would prefer something hatchback or compact SUV-like, the Tata Punch AMT is worth considering, but the gearbox simply is not as smooth or polished as the Honda’s CVT.If you are open to electric cars and have reliable home charging, a Tiago EV is actually a very smart fit for this exact use case because your usage is overwhelmingly city based. That said, if you are specifically considering the Tiago EV, we would suggest waiting a little, as an update is expected and could bring better range value.

Honda Amaze

Tata Punch

Tata Tiago EV