Toyota has already launched its low cost small sedan Toyota Etios petrol. For details, check out –
Toyota Etios Sedan Petrol Specifications, Features, Pictures, Colour Options And On-Road Price
Now the next question which a lot of people are asking is “When Will Toyota Etios Diesel Sedan be launched ?”, which is quite a valid question as people expect a diesel variant as other sedans like Maruti Swift Dzire and Volkswagen Vento etc. are available in the Diesel variants. Toyota being an experienced player in Indian automobile market is playing it safe. It remembers what happened with its Toyota Qualis MPV and Toyota Innova MPV diesel variants, most of these cars were put to use as taxis and cabs because of its reliability and good fuel economy. After such huge usage of these cars as taxis and cabs, the image of these cars were not set as a family car, so it affected the sales quite adversely. The most probably reason why Etios Sedan is not available in Diesel as yet is that Toyota wants to register good sales with petrol as of now and create a family car image of Etios sedan, once its established, it will be comparatively safer to launch the diesel version with the existing 1.4 Liter D4D engine already powering the Toyota Corolla Altis Diesel.
As per the sources, the Toyota Etios Diesel will go on sales by the end of year 2011. This will definitely means some loss in competing with other sedans which are available in Diesel, but this may help get better sales in the long term for Toyota Etios by creating a more positive image with Indian consumers. We will keep you updated with latest developments on this story. You can get these updates for free via our email newsletter, or by following @carblogindia on twitter.
