Jaguar Land Rover Likely To Introduce More Petrol Cars In India

It was just yesterday that Jaguar Land Rover launched the Evoque Convertible with the petrol engine in India and a couple of weeks before that, the company introduced the new 2-litre ingenium petrol engine in the XE and he XF. There certainly is a trend setting in with JLR concentrating on bringing in petrol engines in models. In fact, JLR is not the only company which has been treading on these lines. Luxury car maker, Audi , too made it very clear that it is looking to expand its petrol vehicle portfolio in the country and in the next few years. Currently, 70 per cent of Audi's sales are that of the diesel model and 30 per cent of petrol and that's a significant change just a couple of years later. This trend will only increase because of the disparity in the cost of both diesel and petrol fuels which is why by 2020 the proportion of diesel and petrol cars sold will be 50-50. Something similar is the case with Jaguar Land Rover.

The new Range Rover Evoque Convertible has been launched in only petrol option

Rohit Suri, Managing Director and President, Jaguar Land Rover India, said, "We are seeing a gentle shift towards petrol cars, and we have just prepared ourselves fairly well for this demand and it has grown over the past few years. Yes, demand has shifted towards petrol cars and that's why we are making sure that petrol models are available in the company's line-up in India"

The company has been consciously bringing in petrol options on its cars, case in point, the all-new Discovery which was launched in 2017. The company not only offered the choice of both diesel and petrol engines on the luxury SUV but also made the engine option available across the trim range. The massive price difference between the trims is also an indicator of why the company has pushed for the petrol engine option. The base S trim on the new Discovery with a petrol engine is cheaper by almost Rs. 10 lakh compared to the diesel, while the top-end 'First Edition' is cheaper by Rs. 18 lakh.

Given the fact that the auto industry, as such, is heading towards going electric in the next decade, it looks like petrol is soon becoming the fuel of choice for consumers globally. We wait to find out what more Jaguar Land Rover.