Maruti Suzuki Celerio CNG in the works?

A rumour on the interweb suggests that Maruti Suzuki is readying up a CNG powered version of the hot selling Celerio hatchback for the Indian market. The Celerio was launched in February this year and is currently available with a 1 liter-3 cylinder K-Series petrol engine (67 Bhp-90 Nm). The addition of CNG power to the Celerio will give the car dual fuel (petrol+CNG) capability and will make it an ideal city commuter. However, Motorbeam reports that remains to be seen the Celerio CNG will be sold only in VXi manual trim, which means that the car’s CNG variant will not be offered with the automated manual transmission (AMT) option.

Maruti Suzuki offering an AMT-CNG version of the Celerio makes sense as the car’s AMT variant is primarily meant for city commuting and the addition of a CNG fuel option will only make the Celerio more cost effective in terms of running costs. Also, such a variant would make the Celerio the first CNG Automatic car in India. So, Maruti Suzuki seems to be missing a party trick here by not equipping the Celerio CNG with the AMT option. A limitation of the CNG variant of the Celerio is that such a variant would be suited only to those cities that have well developed CNG dispensing infrastructure.

As most parts of India is yet to gain a well established CNG network, the Celerio CNG variant will be limited to a handful of cities. Since the 1 liter K-Series petrol motor also supports the LPG-Petrol fuel option, as evidenced by the WagonR Duo, Maruti Suzuki could add the LPG option to the Celerio in the times to come. The Celerio LPG will make up for the non-availability of the CNG variant in most parts of India. All said, expect to fork out about 30,000-40,000 rupees extra for the CNG powered Celerio variant. The car is expected to be launched later this month. Meanwhile, Maruti Suzuki is also working on equipping the Celerio with a turbo diesel engine. Click here to read more.