Honda has been hit hard by the rising petrol prices and its sales dipped during September, which it wishes to recover with its new small car Honda Brio. The sales figures for the month of September were as follows:
- Honda Brio: 171
- Honda Jazz: 596
- Honda City: 3720
- Honda Civic: 117
- Honda Accord: 137
- Honda CR-V: 17
This is a serious issue for the brand as at present it does not have any CRDI diesel engines to offer with any of its product. To get back in the race to the top, the manufacturer has been trying hard by following the localization strategy and then cutting down the prices but it is still not able to record enough sales. This can only be resolved if the brand comes up with a diesel engine range and the good news is that one of the official has confirmed this news recently.
India Senior Vice-President (Sales and Marketing), Jnaneswar Sen, said “The Research and Development team in Japan is developing diesel engines. It is premature to say that the products will be rolled out on diesel (platform),”
Although Mr.Sen has confirmed that the engines are under development, he has not spoken on the time line for the launch of the same. He added that the new engines are India specific as there is not much demand for diesel engines in other markets across the globe.
As per the information Honda City will first get the diesel engine, as it is one of the highest selling models, followed by Honda Jazz. Earlier there were talks of Honda City Diesel launch in India by 2013, but the price dynamics of petrol have changed so fast in the past 3 months that we can expect the City Diesel to debut much earlier. It all depends on when Honda Japan is ready with the engine for it and then it probably do rounds of testing for a couple of months before its actually launched. So going by a rough estimate, it can be as early as mid of 2012, but this is just an estimated time frame, it may actually take longer. The Price cut of these two models have helped the sales grow more and this is probably the reason why the same will feature diesel engines first. The 2012 Honda CR-V, expected next year, may also get a diesel heart accompanied by the flagship model Accord.
check out more-
Honda SIEL India News
