New Honda Amaze To Get CNG But Not As A Factory Fitted Option

Weeks ago, Honda Cars India launched its latest offering – the Amaze compact sedan. The all-new 3rd generation car is available with a solitary engine option – the tried and tested 1.2 liter iVTEC 4 cylinder petrol with 89 Bhp-110 Nm. 5 speed manual and CVT automatic gearbox options are on offer with this engine. News is now trickling in that the new Amaze will get a CNG option but it won’t be factory fitted from Honda.

Instead, Honda dealerships will install the CNG kit in the new Amaze, and as things have been in the past, let buyers keep factory warranty intact for at least a few years. This has been Honda’s strategy with CNG for over a decade now, and it’s playing out with the new Amaze as well.

We’ll tell you why Honda does this (not offering CNG as a factory fitted option) in a separate story but for now, this is basically the only way the new Amaze can be had with CNG if you want to keep factory warranty intact.

The CNG kit is likely to come from Lovato – a leading CNG kit maker that supplies to most car makers building CNG powered cars. The kit will have RTO approval, and Honda dealerships will help customers get RC endorsement once the CNG kit is retrofitted onto their Amaze sedans. The CNG tank will sit in the boot, and will off course intrude on luggage space.

If one wants to carry the same amount of luggage that she or he would in a non-CNG kit equipped Amaze, adding an aftermarket roof rack is the only workaround for now. It helps that the new Amaze gets a larger boot than before.

The cost of adding a CNG kit to the Amaze through Honda dealerships is expected to be about 75,000 rupees, which is about 20,000-30,000 cheaper than what a factory fitted option would cost.

For instance, the all-new Maruti Dzire, which is the Amaze’s arch rival, gets a factory fitted CNG kit. The CNG powered version of the Dzire is about 1.1 lakh pricier than the petrol model, variant to variant.

However, a factory fitted kit brings a host of advantages such as 1. Better finish levels and integration in the stock car 2. Uprated suspension to handle the extra weight 3. Better lubrication for the engine to handle the character of CNG (lower lubricating property than petrol) and 4. Finesse in fitment on the factory floor.

The new Honda Amaze is priced higher (starting price is 8 lakh) than the new Maruti Dzire (starting price is 6.79 lakh) but also has more features to justify the higher price. For instance, it’s the first car in the sub-10 lakh rupee segment to feature ADAS. ADAS on the new Amaze is a camera-based unit, as opposed to the more advanced RADAR bases systems. It’s borrowed from its siblings – the Honda City sedan and Elevate SUV that also offer camera-based ADAS.

Honda has consciously kept the all-new Amaze out of the taxi sector as it feels that the car’s image gets diluted by such a move. So, you’re likely to see many more new Maruti Dzire cars in taxi fleets than new Honda Amazes. On whether this is a good or bad thing is something that the end customer will have to decide. For now though, Honda’s sticking to its guns and following the ‘no taxi’ policy for the Amaze, just like it’s always been doing for its other cars sold in India.