Maruti Suzuki India to sell 4-6 lakh CNG vehicles this FY

New Delhi: Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) aims to sell 4-6 lakh CNG units in the current fiscal year. However, the sale would depend upon the availability of essential components, PTI reported citing a senior official in MSI.

In 2021-22, the company had sold 2.3 lakh CNG units. It has inducted a CNG powertrain into nine of its 15 models and planning to do the same in more models. The 17 per cent of MSI's overall sales is by CNG units, MSI Senior Executive Director (Sales and Marketing) Shashank Srivastava told PTI.

Srivastava said that CNG units are gathering attention as it creates lower running costs, and fuel prices have been rapidly climbing over the past years. MSI had sold 74,000 CNG units in 2016-17, nearly 1 lakh in 2018-19, 1.05 lakh in 2019-20 and 1.62 lakh in 2020-21.

In the past, the company said that its launch of the S-CNG vehicle range is in line with the government's vision to reduce oil imports and raise the share of natural gas in the primary energy mix from 6.2 per cent to 15 per cent by 2030.

Srivastava said that 8 out of the top ten selling models last fiscal year belonged to MSI. He added that in the non-SUV segment company's market share is nearly 66 per cent, and it is working on getting a better position in the SUV segment too.

Regarding supply chain issues, he said that MSI has pending orders of 2.7 lakh units because of the semiconductor chip shortage and the rise in commodity prices. The company has increased its price to nearly 8.8 per cent from January 2021.

Srivastava said that the domestic passenger vehicle industry grew 13 per cent in 2020-21, reaching 30.7 lakh. He expects 13-15 per cent growth in the current fiscal. He said that He added that MSI has not yet reached 100 per cent production capacity.