Why Maruti Suzuki expects sales of vehicles with auto gear shift tech to rise

Maruti Suzuki India expects sales of its vehicles with auto gear shift (AGS) technology to accelerate next year due to increasing congestion across cities in India. AGS was introduced by the company for the first time in 2013-14 on its hatchback Celerio and relieves drivers from manually changing gears using the clutch. The company has cumulatively sold 7.74 lakh units of such vehicles across its portfolio so far.

The company has now expanded the AGS technology on many of its models gradually. "We do believe that with increased congestion, especially in urban areas, AGS is a further addition to the ease of driving. So we believe technology will pick up even further," the company's Senior Executive Officer, Marketing & Sales Shashank Srivastava told PTI.

Nine of the company's models - Celerio, Alto K10, WagonR, Dzire, Ignis, Swift, Brezza, S-Presso and Baleno - come with the AGS option. The company informed that in terms of AGS penetration, it varies between 12% to 23% across the models and the volume among individual models also varies because of different times of introduction.

Celerio with AGS technology has clocked cumulative sales of 2 lakh units so far, followed by WagonR at 1.39 lakh units, Swift 1.24 lakh units, Dzire 1.01 lakh units, Alto K10 68,000 units, Ignis 49,000 units, Brezza 39,000 units, S-Presso 37,000 units and Baleno 20,000 units.

Srivastava stated that the increasing acceptance of the AGS technology also comes based on the affordability factor. He cited the example of entry-level SUVs where the price difference between a normal transmission and AGS, is just about ₹50,000, resulting in AGS penetration of around 19 per cent.

On the contrary, for the same type of vehicle with dual-clutch transmission (DCT) or continuously variable transmission (CVT) technology, the price difference is over ₹1.2 lakh, leading to a low penetration.