Auto India, Car India

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The major in UVs in Indian market, Mahindra and Mahindra is now looking at petrol band wagon to run its latest range of vehicles in global market.

The company is developing the fuel efficient and fresh petrol technology to balance its drawbacks regularly related with the SUVs like Land Rover and Hummer whose sales have reduced. M&M is building a fresh range of petrol engines to be secure on their global SUVs named as a next gen Scorpio and other future platforms.

We are planning a new petrol fuel-line to feed the global market. There are certain overseas markets driven by petrol powertrains like Middle-East and the US, which are large enough and offer immense advantages for petrol-driven vehicles. We are looking at a balance between performance and fuel efficiency for the new powertrains, somewhat like the mHawk engine (the diesel engine strapped on to the Scorpio) which gives the best fuel efficiency and performance in its class.

- Mr. Pawan Goenka (M&M president (automotive sector)).

This turn towards petrol arrives on back of M&M’s plans of introducing its SUV Scorpio in US next year. The company has also agreed with few strident anti-diesels campaigning across some segments of India. The disputation of these campaigns is that the diesel is highly polluting and dirty.

Even as M&M will carry on to maintain their stronghold in diesel section backed by new diesel engine arrangement presently under progress, the new type of petrol engines will arrive side by side and provide to rapidly growing petrol SUV section.

We believe that the current anti-diesel feeling should go away. There is no justification as diesel has improved and the newer engines are much smarter and emit lower CO2 levels than petrol. The rise in fuel prices have changed the entire industry dynamics, and diesel, which is more fuel efficient, should be welcomed.

- Mr. Goenka said.

These fresh drivelines (both petrol and diesel) will as well feature in a few of new platforms the company is introducing in next 2-years. The Ingenio will be the first one to be roll out (may be later this year).

The 2nd will be the mass market pick-up vehicle next year, pursued by its weighty duty trucks series in deal with the Navistar International - across 9 to 25 tonnes - to be revealed by 2009-end. The company also has initiated act on new platform for the global SUVs which will substitute Scorpio sometime in a 2010.