Will Cars With Small Capacity Diesel Engines Ever Make A Come Back?

India – Diesel Domination

Diesel cars have always been the primary choice for majority of the Indians due to the economy they offer in the long term

‘Kitna deti hai' is the most important question while buying any car in India. In the early days, it was very easy to make a car successful in the market by just adding a diesel engine in the variant line-up. The trend started from big UVs which were supposed to have only diesel motors. Having a petrol engine in a UV was a wasted investment as it did not have any market. Towards the early 2000s, some SUVs like Scorpio and Safari had petrol engine variants which were a lot more powerful but did not survive for that long.

Diesel small cars

The Celerio Diesel was the only 2 cylinder diesel available in India at one point. It was the result of ever-increasing demand of diesel cars in India

It all started with the Indica which introduced a diesel engine in a small car. These cars became immediately popular with tour operators and even families because of the crazy fuel efficiency figures which it managed to clock, especially on the highways. Furthermore, small cars like the Zen and Palio also had frugal diesel motors in their line-up to survive in the market. Now, the big UVs were only fitted with diesel options for their torquey nature (handy with heavy loads) and fuel efficiency but the same was getting introduced in hatchbacks.

The concept soon became popular until there was a time when diesel small cars were sold in larger numbers than petrol cars. Swift Multijet remains the benchmark of diesel hatchback sales and remained unbeaten for a very long time. After sometime, even 3 cylinder diesel engines were developed to power the entry level cars, leaving no pages unturned in the specification line-up of the variants. The Tiago and Tigor got a 3 cylinder diesel whereas the Celerio even got a 2 cylinder diesel. The market was taken quite seriously by every manufacturer.

BS4 – The last hoorah

Until the introduction of BS3 norms, India had the best diesel engines for sale in India in almost all the cars with all kinds of possible configurations. In fact, the petrol engines were not even given priority and not launching a diesel car during launch was portrayed as an instant failure. The same engines were carried forward with the BS4 norms and all of these engines were compliant enough. In 2019, there were talks that BS6 shall dissolve most of the diesel engines in the market. But, there was no confirmation anywhere besides the engineering department of various manufacturers discussing the same. With the advent of the BS6 norms, it was not practically possible for all manufacturers to invest in new diesel engines all the while maintaining low production costs. So overnight, all the smaller diesel engines were discontinued and the left-over stock was sold in the market up to a certain deadline. A few manufacturers could not even sell all the old stock and brand new cars had to be sent directly to the scrapyard.

BS6 – The Era of Petrol Engines & EVs

The new EVs have changed the notion of low range availability making them good for the city

Petrol prices have been increasing day by day and the existing petrol engines have been reworked upon to provide better technology to the buyer. With BS6 diesel options nearly disappearing in the sub-15 lakh rupees segment, all the buyers have naturally shifted to petrol, accepting their fate of higher fuel expenses. The Turbo Petrol engines are supposedly more fuel-efficient than NA engines but there is still no concrete proof regarding the same and long-term experiences are still yet to prove the claims of modern engineering.

Of late, the EV cars being promoted by the authorities and carmakers have also been usable ones such as the Nexon EV, ZS EV, Tigor EV and the Kona. Luxury brands such as Audi, Mercedes have also been investing in the e-tron line-up and EQC models respectively. Attractive tax benefits and subsidiaries have also been offered in some states to make buyers invest their money in newer EV tech cars. Surprisingly, EV cars have a longer warranty period compared to regular combustion engines.

Will small diesel cars comeback?

The new norms have been developed in such a way that manufacturers won't be able to invest in diesel cars anymore especially in the entry level segment

Currently, the government is not promoting diesel technology in passenger cars. Right now, only the bigger cars are available with diesel engines and complying with BS6 emission norms. It is clear that the smaller cars will no longer see a diesel motor under the hood. There´s a high chance that we might not even see small petrol cars in the future and EVs might take-over the entry level segments. Petrol engines might be only sold in bigger cars and diesel engines could be completely phased out and possibly only be present in the history books. Everything now depends upon how fast India develops with respect to EV engineering and infrastructure to make them feasible for day to day usage.