Petrol cars are back in fashion with the narrowing price gap between petrol and diesel. Though most of the sedans and utility vehicles (UVs) offer both diesel and petrol variants, an increasing number of buyers are opting for petrol variants of those models now, data show.
The price gap between diesel and petrol is now in the range of Rs.9-12 across metros when compared with about Rs.24 a year ago.
With increase in diesel prices, the sales of diesel variants in total passenger vehicle (PV) volumes has been continuously declining from a peak of 58 per cent in 2012-13.
Honda Cars India has seen higher number of buyers preferring petrol variants in the recent months. “Share of diesel variant in our compact Sedan Amaze has fallen to 55 per cent now from about 80 per cent a year-ago, while in the case of Honda City it is 50:50,” said JnaneswarSen, Senior Vice President- Sales & Marketing, Honda Cars India Ltd.
Maruti’s total petrol car sales in this August were the highest (68.5 per cent) in the past 2-3 years.
The share of petrol cars in its total PV sales was 68 per cent in Q1 of this fiscal when compared with about 65 per cent in a year-ago period.
For Hyundai, the ratio between diesel and petrol is 50:50 for the models that offer both petrol and diesel variants.
But, the diesel share was 60 per cent in a year-ago period. Models such as Grand i10 and Elite i20 see higher number of buyers for diesel variants.
“With petrol prices on a downward curve and diesel prices moving towards market linkage, we expect the average petrol to diesel price ratio to reach a decadal low of 1.2 times in 2014-15. This will lead to a further shift towards petrol cars and the proportion of petrol cars in total passenger vehicles sold is expected to increase to 55 per cent from 47 per cent in 2013-14,” Ajay Srinivasan, Director, Crisil Research said.
So, vehicle makers are cognizant of this trend and have recently launched petrol variants in sedans as well as utility vehicles segment, which have been traditionally dominated by diesel.
The share of diesel vehicle sales for sedan and UVs was 70-75 per cent, while that for small cars was about 34 per cent in 2013-14.
