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Thank you for your guidance Avi

Took delivery of the Petrol AT on Sunday :-)

Congratulations, Amit!

Yours is the first Creta petrol AT purchase in our forums, I believe.

Please do make an ownership thread on your wonderful car, detailing the lead-up to your purchase and your thought process behind your final decision, and why you preferred the petrol AT over the diesel AT. I am sure there must be plenty of valid reasons, other than the additional cost, which can be an eye-opener for several other prospective customers who are either sitting on the fence regarding this crucial decision, or simply cannot decide which one would be more beneficial to them in the long run.

Looking forward to reading your ownership report soon. All the best and I wish you and your steed plenty of happy (s)miles ahead. Revv' hard but drive safe!

Absolutely, intend to write an ownership review as soon as I have clocked some miles

I benefited immensely from your thread and others on the forum and would love to share my experience soon

I agree with all your points, alpha1.

Not really a response, however, I have a few things to say about point 2.

Most turbo charged engines produce their peak torque over a range. That, the peak horsepower and the engine size can give some idea about the engine's torque curve. It is not so easy in case of an NA engine.

For e.g: Ford Figo 1.5 TDCI: 215 Nm @ 1750-3000 RPM; 99 HP @ 3750 RPM
S-Cross 1.6 DDiS; 320 Nm @ 1750 RPM; 118 HP @ 3750 RPM

For a 1.5 diesel, 215 Nm is not anything great, this gives away the fact that Ford is not trying to extract a fat peak torque out of it by using a huge turbo, but is trying to provide better drivability at low end minimizing the turbo lag. Also, that peak torque running for full 1250 RPM suggests that the torque curve is a nice flat, wide one in the mid range. Then if we look at the peak power, we can see that the TDCI manages to retain about 188 Nm at 3750 RPM or about 87.4% of peak.

With all these data, it's not hard to imagine the torque curve of the 1.5 TDCI.
In other words, we can say that there is a healthy amount of torque down low, a nice, wide mid range and a good top end till about 4000 RPM which tells why the car excels in both drivability and out right performance (light weight adds to it)

Coming to S-Cross, the 1.6 gets a huge turbo for that paper spec of 320 Nm of torque. The torque makes its presence felt too giving the owners a false sense of super fast car.
Now, 320 from a budget 1.6 guarantees one thing -> turbo lag and the S-Cross has it in loads.
The specs say that the S-Cross starts losing that fat torque immediately after its peak.
The meagre peak power gives away the fact that the torque drops to just 224 Nm at 3750 RPM, i.e. just 70% of peak.
Again, for an engine used in a budget car, there would be either a fat peak torque, or an average torque spread nicely over a wide range. The S-Cross gets the former.

The S-Cross' torque curve is also not hard to get right with all the data. It is dud below 1500-1600, spikes after that, reaches its peak at 1750, starts dropping off quite sharply after that.
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On topic:
As a result, it gives a false sense of super fastness to the drivers while it is not so quick in reality (compared to 2.0 TDIs making that 320 Nm of peak torque weighing 200+ kg more). The 1.5 TDCI in Figo which does not give that massive turbo kick like the 1.6 DDiS beats it in terms of both outright performance and drivability (weight is just one factor, as the heavier Ecosport with lesser torque than Figo is not much slower than S-Cross 1.6 even though it feels like it). The Abarth Punto which weighs only a little less, leaves it in dust in terms of outright performance in spite of having just 212 Nm because of its wide power band.

http://m.overdrive.in/reviews/afford...suzuki-baleno/

Baleno diesel, with a heavier nose is faster around the track than the Baleno petrol. I know how smooth, drivable and free to rev the Baleno's k-series is as I had a Swift with the same engine, yet the diesel bettered it.

Come 2020, and with the BS-VI emission norms kicking in, the Indian small car market could be completely dominated by petrols while diesel options might be restricted to larger cars and SUVs only.

The single biggest reason for this is that the investments required to upgrade diesel engines to BS-VI norms is very, very high, and as such is not economically viable for smaller cars (hatchbacks) which have low profit margins. New technologies such as the 'lean NOx trap' (for passenger vehicles) and 'selective catalytic reduction' (for trucks and buses) cost a bomb and thus overall costs associated with a diesel car will increase exponentially.

This is why major car manufacturers are not in the process of developing any smaller capacity diesel engines for the future.

Sumit Sawhney, country CEO and managing director, Renault India:

C V Raman, executive director of engineering, Maruti Suzuki:

Girish Wagh, senior vice-president (programme planning and project management), Tata Motors:

According to an ICRA report:


Also, with new-generation petrol cars such as the Tata Tiago, the Maruti Suzuki Celerio and the Renault Kwid offering fuel efficiency figures of upto 25 kms to the litre, petrol cars have suddenly jumped in the mileage ladder and are now almost at par with their diesel counterparts, which cost more and are also quite expensive to maintain.

The Tata Tiago, for example, comes with the option of a 1.05-litre diesel engine (its smallest for a passenger vehicle), yet, 70 per cent of the model's sales come from the petrol variants.

As such, car companies will be keen to divert their investments in developing newer models, instead of concentrating their energies and investments on upgrading engines to BS-VI norms AND make them economically viable to the regular Indian customer at the same time.

Business Standard

I recently had a discussion with a friend who argues that the difference of maintenance cost between petrol and diesel is very less. And it's a myth now. Is that true?

Is the maintenance of petrol and diesel are on par now?

I would say the regular scheduled maintenance costs are not too far apart. Just that the diesel filter requires more frequent replacement and few other smaller bits like that. And there is also a larger (and slightly more expensive) battery required for the diesel engines...

But in the longer run, the relatively simpler petrol cars are fuss free, while the diesel cars might throw tantrums with glow plugs, fuel rail and injectors, turbo, intercooler, EGR and few other parts reaching their serviceable life.

Overall, the cost of owning a diesel car would be slightly more expensive than its simple petrol counterpart.

I am replacing my Swift-VDI and because I wanted to go via exchange route, I took approach of Total cost of ownership while doing calculation of petrol vs diesel.

I know I could sell the old car rather than exchange at better price but I prefer this no-headache approach.

So when Nexa offered lowest buy back and no discount, Baleno petrol could not remain attractive at least cost wise and this helped me to justify myself that 60k over 7 years is worth the fun I will have with i20 Diesel.



May be there will be some flaws, let me know. for example, I have not done a very tedious calculation of interest of money saved by using diesel vs petrol on month by month basis :)

With the inexorable price parity that is creepingly setting in between the two fuels, the only few reasons to compare really would be the turbo, power surge, torque and luggability of the diesels vs the petrol engines.
Maintenance is really all about how one keeps ones vehicle and how much one wants to spend on it each year.
So frankly there isnt going to be that much of a difference except in conditions of heavy usage where the lower fuel costs of diesel result in some savings which in turn need not be set off by the cost of maintenance especially when it comes to these modern diesels which are very frugal and dont cost frightful amounts for quality upkeep. It boils down then, to the kind of 'feel' and performance that one is looking for and wants from ones car.
Of course, size and weight and load carrying capacity is a major factor in this, which is probably the main reason, coupled with the fact that the larger 'load carrier' type of vehicles are mostly diesel powered, thus causing a bit of a skew towards diesel.

One more point I would like to add-

Due to the under 4m tax exemption rule being different for petrols and diesels(allowance of 1200cc for petrol vis-a-vis 1500cc for diesels), if we consider the cars in the 6-11 lakhs range(excluding the C2 segment), in majority of the cases, the diesel is not only the more efficient but also the better engine w.r.t. performance and drivability. In some cases, the difference in performance is actually huge, with cars like the Ameo, Polo and i20 falling into this category. Exceptions like the Grand i10 are there though.

An enthusiast with this budget might just go for a diesel irrespective of the petrol-diesel prices.

The Figo petrol T+ and diesel T(O) are priced only ~60k INR apart, the diesel T+ another 30k up. Given the merits of the 1.5 TDCi compared to its 1.2 Ti-VCT sibling, it's a bit of a no-brainer.

There are no 'performance' petrols available below 8 lacs. The 1.2 TSi, 1.4 T-Jet and 1.5 iVTEC all end up close to or over 10L OTR.

What's a petrolhead on a budget supposed to do?

Get a used Fiesta S or a used Linea TJet or get a Punto and diesel and remap it. :P

Competed 15k kms in a turbo petrol car in just 8.5 months.

Was there a similarly priced diesel car that I considered ? No. Frankly no diesel car came close to performance/price.

Also even if I forget the performance aspect for a minute, with the difference in petrol vs diesel rate, even 20k kms per year in a petrol hatch will require more than 5 years to break even.

Please refrain from making claims without any maths behind it. The current difference in both the fuels stands at almost Rs. 12.2. How will it take you more than 5 years to break even with a running of 20k kms per year, regardless of the car and engine you take into your calculations.please: