Mahindra banks on petrol engines after diesel ban

India’s largest sports utility vehicle maker, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), will launch a series of compact petrol engines in the near future, even as its mainstay diesel line-up faces an uncertain future. The company on Friday unveiled its new sports utility vehicle (SUV) christened the KUV1OO to be sold in petrol and diesel options.

The Mumbai-based company, which is to bear the brunt of the Supreme Court ban on sale of diesel vehicles above 2,000 cc in Delhi and national capital region (NCR), will have a petrol option ready for most of its offering, including heavy SUVs such as Scorpio and XUV5OO.

Pawan Goenka, executive director of M&M, said, “We are already on our way to having a strong petrol portfolio. We have more petrol engines in the pipeline. We are currently working on the Scorpio and XUV5OO petrol versions. We will have petrol options available in most of our products within a medium term.”

Goenka was speaking to the media on the sidelines of unveiling the company's eighth product of the year, the all-new compact SUV KUV1OO, which gets launched next month. The new launch will be insulated from the Supreme Court ban as it will run on a sub-2,000 cc diesel engine. The new SUV, which will have engines nearly half the size of the current average size of M&M engines, will be positioned against the Ford EcoSport and the upcoming Maruti Suzuki SUV.

This is a ground-up new vehicle from the Mumbai-based company based on a new vehicle platform. The launch will see M&M entering the petrol segment with a compact 1.2-litre engine. An equal-sized diesel engine will also be offered as an option. The Mahindra Scorpio and the XUV5OO are powered by 2.5-litre and 2.2-litre diesel engines, respectively. The KUV1OO and the recently launched TUV3OO will replace the other more expensive M&M models such as Bolero, Thar, Scorpio, and XUV5OO in showrooms in Delhi-NCR as the sales of the three models are banned till March 31 in those markets.

The KUV1OO (standing for Kool Utility Vehicle) will be launched on January 15 with four main variants, seven colours with air bags offered as an option in all the variants and anti-lock braking system added as standard. Bookings of the vehicle will be opened from Saturday.

The all-aluminium 1.2-litre petrol engine branded as mFalcon G80 churns out 82 bhp power. The diesel version, branded as mFalcon D75, generates up to 77bhp power. Both engines, which cost Rs 500 crore to M&M, meet BS-IV norms and are capable of meeting BS-V and BS-VI emission norms, Goenka added. With the new engines on the KUV1OO, M&M will have launched three of the six new engines it was working on.

A 1.5-litre petrol and 1.6-litre petrol and diesel are in the works and will be seen in near future, said the company. The TUV3OO saw M&M enter the compact diesel category with a 1.5-litre engine even as car makers such as Maruti, Hyundai and Tata Motors have been using small diesel engines for many years.

“The way forward would be compact engines. We had the TUV3OO to begin with and now we have the KUV1OO. In future, we will have many more variants,” added Goenka.

Besides SUVs from Ford and Maruti, M&M would also look to target B-segment hatchbacks such as Hyundai Grand i10, Maruti Suzuki WagonR, Maruti Suzuki Celerio and Tata Zica, company officials said.

“We had done a survey, according to which there were many young buyers who were interested in buying a compact SUV but were instead settling for hatchbacks because there was no SUV in that segment,” said Vivek Nayer, chief marketing officer, M&M.

Exact pricing details of the KUV1OO will be announced at the time of the launch though the market expects the SUV to be priced at Rs 5.5-6 lakh.