India’s leading utility vehicle manufacturer Mahindra & Mahindra has plans to offer the option of a petrol variant across its entire portfolio from 2018.

 

“Any product that we launch from a year after will come with a petrol engine. We are currently working on a 1.5-litre petrol engine. So the petrol engines powering the future vehicles will be either of the three: 1.2, 1.5 or 2.0 litre,” Pawan Goenka, executive director, M&M said.

 

The Supreme Court's decision to ban the registration of diesel vehicles with engine capacity over 2,000cc in Delhi-NCR has resulted in a shift in consumer preference to petrol cars. Automakers, too, are pushing for more petrols to cater to the increasing demand. Mahindra launched a 1.9-litre version of its mHawk diesel engine for the XUV500 and Scorpio in its key market of Delhi-NCR a bid to surmount the ban.

 

Data revealed by SIAM (Society of Indian Automobile Manufactures) showed that the share of diesels among the total sales of passenger vehicles during April-June 2016-17 declined to 41 percent from 44 percent in the previous year, while petrols increased to 59 percent from 56 percent.

 

In fact, the demand for petrol variants of the KUV100 has been more than anticipated, Goenka said. As many as 50 percent of buyers have opted for the petrol version of the KUV 100, which was launched in January earlier this year, up from around the company’s expectation of 40 percent.