HYBRID PLANS

Maruti Suzuki targets selling a million cleaner, greener cars

WITH ALL CARMAKERS GETTING ready for electric cars, the country’s largest carmaker couldn’t be left behind. But rather than launch any new EVs, Maruti Suzuki is being more pragmatic and holistic by adopting greener tech for its volume cars under the ambitious plan called the Mission Green Million.

Maruti Suzuki India reached a key milestone of 20 million passenger vehicle sales in 37 years. While the company succeeded in realising the milestone of 10 million vehicle sales in close to 29 years, the next 10 million passenger vehicles were sold in a record time of 8 years.

Maruti Suzuki has achieved sales of over 1.15 million green vehicles (CNG and mild hybrid). With this in mind, Maruti Suzuki has initiated ‘Mission Green Million’, in line with its commitment of “introducing newer, greener and customer friendly technologies for the Indian customers.” The company intends to sell one million green vehicles in next couple of years by focusing on not only CNG but evaluating hybrid technology which, they now term Strong Hybrid.

On display at the Auto Expo was the Swift hybrid that is sold in Japan with a parallel hybrid system that uses idle stop/start, regenerative braking and torque assist to achieve higher fuel efficiency. While there are no plans to launch this anytime soon it’s heartening to note that the country’s largest car manufacturer is now actively looking at hybrid technology and if they can bring down costs, it could be the trigger for mass adoption of hybrid and plug-in hybrids, before EVs take over.