Maruti S-Cross petrol launch timeline announced

Maruti Suzuki is India’s largest car manufacturer and they had last year announced that this year they will be dumping their diesel engines and will be concentrating more on petrol, CNG and even electric vehicles. Maruti has already started implementing this and all their new models like the XL6 are now only available with a petrol engine only. Many other existing models like Maruti Ciaz, Maruti Dzire, Maruti Brezza have also discontinued diesel engines and are only available with a petrol engine only. The next vehicle to get a petrol engine is the S-Cross and Maruti Suzuki will be launching it in the market next month.

The S-Cross petrol was supposed to be launched in the market this month but due to the current situation in the country they have delayed the launch by a month. The S-Cross is a premium crossover that is being sold via Nexa dealerships across the country. The petrol version of the S-Cross was displayed at the Auto Expo this year and looks identical to the BS4 diesel version.

The BS4 version of the S-Cross was only available with a diesel engine and just like the older Vitara Brezza, it was also powered by a 1.3 litre diesel engine that was sourced from Fiat. As the engine was sourced from Fiat they had informed that they will not be upgrading the 1.3 litre unit to meet the BS6 emission norms. Other reason was the cost involved. Cost of converting a BS4 diesel engine to BS6 is way more expensive than converting a petrol engine to BS6.

Considering all these factors Maruti had decided to dump the diesel engine and use the new petrol engine that was developed by Suzuki in-house. The engine is the petrol unit that is currently being used the Ertiga, Ciaz, XL6 and even the 2020 Maruti Brezza compact SUV. The S-Cross will also get the 1.5 litre naturally aspirated petrol engine that is capable of generating 105 bhp and 138 Nm of peak torque.

The engine will be mated to a -speed manual transmission and there is a possibility that Maruti might introduce the 4-speed automatic transmission with SHVS technology to the S-Cross too. With a petrol engine under the hood that is BS6 compliant, the prices for the S-Cross is likely to be lower than that of the diesel BS4 version. The S-Cross will go up against the petrol powered variants of the Renault Duster, Kia Seltos and the Hyundai Creta.