Maruti Suzuki doing away with diesel powertrains was known to us. Company’s Chairman- R.C Bhargava had categorically said last year that the company will step away from the diesel car business comes April 2020, which is when the stringent Bharat Stage 6 (BS6) emission norms will be mandated nationwide. Well! We have already seen that happening with the 2020 Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza Facelift and 2020 S-Cross that have shifted to petrol only offering and now it’s the Dzire subcompact sedan that’s gone petrol only with the launch of the facelift.
Maruti Suzuki has discontinued diesel engines even in the Vitara Brezza and S-Cross SUVs.
Besides that incorporating BS6 diesel unit in small cars wouldn’t have been cost effective, making subcompact models a whole lot expensive, a big reason behind the discontinuation is also because Fiat has taken its 1.3-litre multijet engine off the production line. As most of you would be familiar with, the 1.3-litre, four-cylinder multijet diesel unit has been serving Maruti for all its subcompact cars, including the Dzire. It was tuned to produce 73 bhp and 200 Nm of peak torque in the pre-facelift Dzire. Last unit of the mill was rolled out on January 23 and Fiat has produced 800,050 units of the engine so far. It was in September 2017 that Fiat had announced phasing out the 1.3-Litre engine due to the high cost of upgradation to meet the BS6 standards.
The new Maruti Suzuki Dzire is being offered only with a BS6 compliant 1.2-litre petrol engine.
Having said that, Maruti Suzuki has developed a brand new 1.5-litre, four-cylinder diesel engine which is powering the diesel variants of the Ciaz and Ertiga, but there is no confirmation of converting it to BS6. The company had announced that it will convert the in-house developed engine to BS6 for cars measuring over four-metres, only if it sees enough demand despite the price hike. There are no plans to continue introduce any diesel mill in cars that measure less four metres in length.
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