How are diesels affected?
While gasoline-powered engines have it easier comparitively, as they just require engine remaps and exhaust reworks, the same cannot be said for their diesel counterparts The low sulphur content of the new fuel causes more damage to the engine during runtime. As a result, these engines have to be made stronger, and less polluting. Naturally, this cannot be achieved with a buck or two!
Maruti Suzuki, who have recently announced that the diesels present in their small cars will bite the dust soon, has estimated that the price gap between the petrol and diesel engines will increase to about Rs 2.5 lakhs if the norms are to be met! That is a lot of money for just a different engine, especially when the prices of the small cars itself are quite low. So get ready to say goodbye to diesel variants of a lot of small cars not just from Maruti but also a lot of other brands.
The main reason diesels became popular in the small car segment is due to the cheap and efficient nature of the engines themselves. But now, the decreasing gap between petrol and diesel prices and the increasing efficiency of the latest petrol engines makes buying a small diesel car a questionable financial choice. This is why car manufacturers don’t see the profit in small diesels anymore.
