Maruti Suzuki plans to export petrol models to Africa

It is a plain fact that the Indian car market has shifted towards diesel. In the past year, sales of petrol-powered cars have slumped to such an extent that carmakers here in India have been seeing diesel version of their cars outsell the petrol models by a huge margin. Although some of this can be put down to the big volume sellers such as the Alto and the Wagon R not coming with a diesel option, thus favoring the overall sales of diesel cars. 

The situation has even hampered the overall sales of Maruti Suzuki, country’s leading carmaker. Despite huge discount packages being offered on several petrol car models, the sales have been rather disappointing. Which is why the company is now planning to export petrol models to export markets in Africa; where petrol powered cars are still sold in huge numbers since the cost of diesel and petrol is the same.  

The idea of exporting petrol models overseas does seem to work in favor of Maruti Suzuki given that the company is presently churning out only 70 per cent of its total capacity to manufacture petrol cars. The production can be ramped up easily to produce enough cars per month that could be exported to Africa.