Some popular vehicles plying on Indian roads will not be available from April 1 as car manufacturers rationalise number of vehicles produced under BS-VI. Automaker will stop production of these cars since the cost of transition to BSVI vehicles is high.
Models that will no longer be produced include Etios, Corolla Altis, Liva from Toyota, KUV 100 diesel and Bolero Plus from Mahindra apart from Hexa, Safari Storme, Zest Bolt and other older generation of Tata Motors cars.
All diesel variants of Maruti cars and Renault will also be pulled off.
Hyundai will only discontinue Xcent as they have already transitioned most of their models to BS-VI. The Xcent CNG variant has been launched to replace Xcent and cater to the fleet segment.
According to industry executives, OEMs would replace vehicles with newer models and variants. Auto companies might be looking at gasoline-powered engines to replace the diesel-powered engines, experts say.
But this doesn't seem to harm Maruti, India's largest auto manufacturer. "Maruti is manufacturing BS6 vehicles from end January 2020 and this transition from BS-IV to BS-VI was planned a year in advance. Best-selling mass models such as Alto and Baleno were upgraded with BS-VI petrol engines in April 2019. This was closely followed by WagonR, Swift and Dzire in June 2019 and Ertiga in July 2019, XL6 in August 2019, S-PRESSO in September 2019; Eeco, Celerio, Super Carry, Ciaz in January 2020 and Vitara Brezza, IGNIS in February 2020. We had also announced the end of BS-IV diesel vehicles nearly a year in advance so that our customers have an informed of fuel type," Shashank Srivastava, ED, (marketing and sales) told Economics Times.
Tata Motors too will focus solely on their new generations of cars like Nexon, Altroz, Tiago, Tigor, Harrier and their electric vehicle segment.
Vendors have been replacing the older variants to BS-VI vehicles too. But given several external conditions, suppliers find it difficult to provide the necessary parts.
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