April 01, 2020 is the date when the face of the Indian Automotive Sector will change significantly. This is the date from when, the Bharat Stage VI norms of emissions will be introduced all across the country. What is of significance here is the models on offer from the major automotive companies in India. Most of the companies including Maruti-Suzuki, Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra have gone on record stating that they would stop manufacture of small diesel engine cars as the cost of converting diesel engines from BS IV to BS VI is very high leading to an average increase in car prices between INR 1.2 to 1.5 Lakhs/ unit (US $1644 to US $ 2055 / unit) which buyers of small cars would not be ready to pay. As a result, all these companies would be discontinuing their models with 1.0 to 1.3 litre diesel engines and offer only petrol engines.

Hyundai however, has different approach. Hyundai is presently offering BS VI engines on the i10 NIOS and the new Elantra. However, they intend to continue offering BS VI diesel engines on all their models including the newly up coming Hyundai Aura. Hyundai claims that though the proportion of diesel cars sold has been falling the figures have gone up in absolute numbers. In fact, for Hyundai, on an average, diesel models account for 38.75 percent in total sales. But they expects this to rise sharply from April 2020 when it launches BS VI-compliant variants. Also, they believe that with all the companies vacating the diesel field, the diesel customers would flock to Hyundai.

The whole strategy revolves around offering a good diesel car at the right price where the premium paid by the customer would be offset by advantages like better mileage and reduced cost of operation.

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