NEW DELHI: The country's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki India has announced April 11, 2012 as the
launch date for its high-end multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) Ertiga. The new seven seater compact MPV was unveiled at the 11th Auto Expo.
The price of
Maruti's latest car will be decided after the Union Budget 2012-13 which presented
on March 16.
With an additional cess on diesel cars expected to be
announced, the decision on number of petrol and diesel variants of Ertiga to be
rolled out, will also be taken post Budget.
Maruti is planning to sell around 5,000 units of Ertiga every
month. The launch of Ertiga is said to be
important as it marks the company's entry into high-end multi-purpose vehicle
category. Maruti already has its presence in the lower and middle end segments
with Omni and Eeco.
The car is expected to fetch good
margins for Maruti due to lack of much competition in the category. The nearest
rival is said to be Mahindra Xylo.
Ertiga is manufactured at the
company's plant in Gurgaon. With Ertiga, Maruti Suzuki will step into the
Utility Vehicle (UV) segment and effectively create a new compact MPV segment
in India.
With
this car, the company will for the first time introduce K-14 VVT 1.4 litre
engine in India.
The company claims that fuel efficiency of the diesel variant(1.3 litre DDiS Super Turbo) will be 20.77 kmpl.
According to estimates provided by the company, the utility
vehicle segment accounts for around 14 percent of the Indian automobile
industry and 66 per cent of these are MPV.
In February, the company recorded highest domestic sales so
far this fiscal at 1,07,653 units, compared to 1,01,543 units in the year-ago
period, registering a growth of 6.02 per cent.
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