Maruti Swift Hybrid: Would another Hybrid make sense for the Indian market
Electric and Hybrid vehicles are not new to the automotive Industry, especially with almost every leading automaker having their partaking in the segment in some way or the other. While hybrid vehicles have been successful in few niche markets, the fact still remains that India is not the one among them. Having said that, industry experts speculate that the country’s leading car maker Maruti Suzuki India plans to launch its Swift Hybrid Range Extender in the Indian market in order to change that trend. Our only question is, are hybrid cars truly a viable choice for the Indian consumer?
The Indian customer has never truly accepted electric and hybrid vehicles, which is quite evident from cars like Mahindra Reva, Toyota Prius and Camry Hybrid which have not managed to rake in the kind of numbers that they aught to. In fact a testament to this fact was the discontinuation of Civic Hybrid by Honda a couple of years ago due to excessive price on the technology being offered and lack of infrastructure about which the end user is way skeptic.
We also cannot deny the fact that electric and hybrid cars have some advantages that perfectly suits a country like India, like lower emissions and better gas mileage, tax benefit & savings, less dependency on conventional fuel and light weight. But sighting the infrastructure needs and the negative perception that the Indian consumer has towards hybrid cars can Maruti Suzuki change this scenario, especially with its “Car for the Common Man” persona?
The Indian government too for quite some time now has been trying to lure buyers into purchasing electric and hybrid vehicles. An effort that began with the introduction of the FAME India Scheme- 'Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric vehicles in India' - as a part of the National Electric Mobility Mission Plan. This scheme also offers special incentives on electric and hybrid vehicles of up to INR 29,000 for two-wheelers and INR 1.38 lakh for cars.
Coming to the vehicle itself Swift Range Extender was initially developed for a private government pilot project. It is said to be powered by a 658cc, 3-cylinder petrol engine which would be mated to a permanent magnet synchronous motor that gives out a power output 73bhp. Even with this constrained power output the vehicle is claimed to return an impressive 48.2Km/l of mileage with an electric driving range of about 25.5 Kms. Despite being a smaller capacity engine, it is good for 73bhp.
Further, this particular hybrid offers three driving modes: series hybrid, parallel hybrid and the third one being all electric. In series hybrid mode, the engine is used to charge the electric motor and this in turn powers the vehicle. While in parallel hybrid mode, both the engine and the electric motor turn the wheels whereas in all electric mode, only the electric power is used to power this machine. But building such a clean, efficient and emission-free car requires resourceful infrastructure, increased production cost and better awareness. This again brings us to the question that can Maruti impose a pricing strategy that not only allows it to incur the production cost for a hybrid, but also makes it attractive enough for the end consumer.
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