Why Maruti Suzuki Ertiga CNG has a nine-month long wait period
- Maruti Suzuki believes demand for CNG vehicles will remain high despite the current pricing of the fuel. Here is why.
Maruti Suzuki has expanded its lineup of models with company-fitted CNG - Compressed Natural Gas - kits to 12 with the recent launch of Baleno and XL6, the first cars under the Nexa brand to get the alternate fuel option. But while the country's largest car maker continues to bet big on CNG technology, there is a long wait period for most of these models, led by demand for Ertiga.
Also Read : Full drive review of Maruti Suzuki Ertiga CNG
The updated Ertiga was launched in April and the S-CNG technology was added as an option subsequently. Demand for the CNG variant shot up almost immediately and there is currently a nine-month-long wait period. While a high demand is a shot in the arm for Maruti Suzuki, the semiconductor shortage has meant that production has not been able to keep pace. “As of today pending bookings for CNG vehicles is about 1.23 lakh units," Shashank Srivastava, Senior Executive Director for Marketing and Sales at Maruti Suzuki India Limited said on Monday, adding that unavailability of CNG controller semiconductor along with certain other components related to the technology led to an increase in wait times for almost all of the CNG models offered.
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While Srivastava further highlights that the situation is improving, he also chose to put the focus on an increase in demand for CNG vehicles. “Bookings per day for CNG vehicles last year was somewhere between 1,300 and 1,400. It rose to around 1,500 in the first quarter of this fiscal. Increase in CNG prices led to it coming back to between 1,300 and 1,400 again and it has remained there since."
But does shrinking price difference between a kilo of CNG and a litre of petrol emerge as a deterring factor for potential customers. Srivastava is confident that the current pricing of CNG is temporary. “People are also more aware now than before. We found that a large number of Nexa customers also want a car with lower emission levels," he explained.
Maruti Suzuki first brought in CNG technology to its models back in 2010 when S-CNG was introduced in the WagonR and Eeco. Since, the company has gone on to ditch diesel entirely and focus on a petrol-only and petrol-CNG strategy.
