MARUTI SUZUKI FOLLOWS A VERY INTERESTING PRICE STRATEGY FOR THE ERTIGA PETROL AND DIESEL MPVS

At the outset, here’s a thumb rule if you’re planning to buy a car in the near future but are sitting on the fence on whether to go for a petrol or a diesel engined car. Buy a petrol car if you’re monthly running is about 500 to 600 kilometers. Anything more than this, a diesel car would be a better bet for you even if it is pricier when compared to petrol cars. Talking of pricing, Maruti Suzuki seems to be following a very interesting pricing strategy with the recently launched 2012 Ertiga compact MPV. Maruti has priced the base petrol Ertiga at INR 5.89 lakhs and the base diesel model at INR 7.30 lakhs, which means that there is a yawning gap of about 1.4 lakh rupees, which is a considerable sum of money indeed.

Now, there could be two reasons for Maruti choosing to price the petrol and diesel variants of the Ertiga so wide apart. One of course is the fact that Maruti could be trying to push sales of the petrol engined model as more and more car buyers are opting for diesel engined cars. To give you a perspective on how wide this growing chasm between petrol and diesel engined cars has been over the past year or so, out of every 10 Swift hatchbacks Maruti sells, 8 of them are diesel engined models and only 2 are petrol powered. And, it is a similar story with other car makers in India as well.

This big tilt towards diesel cars means that Maruti is stuck up with petrol engine inventory and plant capacity. Therefore, the Ertiga’s pricing strategy may be a move by the country’s largest car maker to encourage sales of petrol engined cars for better capacity utilization. The other angle to this story is of course the fact that Maruti could be using the petrol-diesel divide to make hay even as the diesel powered sun shines, pun definitely intended there. The higher price of the diesel engined Ertiga in addition to brisk sales is expected to make this latest MPV in India a very profitable venture for Maruti. 

The just launched Ertiga comes with a 1.4 Liter petrol K-series engine good for 95 Bhp-130 Nm and a 1.3 Liter Fiat Multijet diesel engine rated at 90 Bhp-200 Nm. Both these engines are paired with a 5 speed manual gearbox. The Ertiga is available in 5 and 7 seat options in three variants each, for the petrol and diesel engines. The Ertiga shares its interiors and dashboard with the new Swift hatchback and this has ensured that material quality if of high order. The Ertiga petrol is rated at an ARAI certified mileage of 16.02 Kmpl while the diesel model is touted to deliver 20.77 Kmpl.