[shibujp]

Wow!! That is a huge dip by any stretch of imagination. Personally I feel that it was just a matter of when. Sure the NGT ruling in Delhi, the high court ruling in Kerala, VW dieselgate etc all hastened the process. However it is important to remember why diesel gained prominence in the first place which was largely due to the artificially depressed diesel prices in India citing transport costs.

A lot has happened in this respect in the past 5 years like deregulation (to whatever extent) of fuel prices and a gradual price parity between petrol and diesel. Currently if you look at the price changes petrol gets cut by 2 rupees while diesel gets cut by a measly few paise further reducing the price difference.

Also there is hardly any talk of the old "raise diesel price and the price of everything goes up" argument any longer. As an enthusiast, I would like to see prices of both fuels very close to each other so that people have a decent choice in engines. In the last few years we've been really starved of good petrol engines and models like the Baleno RS etc are hopefully steps in the right direction in that respect.

Drive on,
Shibu.

[volkman10]

Diesel Vs Petrol car sales trend,

It is this uncertainty ( NGT ban) that has led to the sudden shift in demand for petrol cars over diesel cars. If it was the narrowing gap between petrol and diesel fuel prices that had triggered the shift, the crackdowns on diesel vehicles accelerated the shift.



Source

[ashokabs]

Someone mentioned that Honda and Toyota will not invest in India. Since, India is the largest potential market in the world and the Chinese market is saturated where will Toyota and Honda sell cars! It is true that poor planning and knee jerk decisions, whether by judiciary or government, will make life very tough for investors. It is one of the reasons that for so many years foreign manufacturers were not keen on investing in India.

[volkman10]

Maruti Suzuki gains market share in wake of diesel ban in NCR, increases market share across India.

Not only on diesel , the market leader also had new generation products like Ciaz, Baleno and Vitara Brezza in its arsenal which found great acceptance with urban buyers.
Other contributions for its success,

its network is much stronger in these markets. Nexa has redefined the purchase and ownership experience. Technologies like mild hybrid and AMT have made our vehicles much more appealing for urban customers

The new generation models -S Cross, Ciaz, Baleno and Brezza have brought incremental sales of more than 2-3 lakh units.

The new generation products, especially Baleno, have helped Maruti woo the youth and women buyers from major cities

Source

[hrman]

The price difference between Petrol and Diesel per litre has gone down to the lowest levels in recent times. In Chennai, the difference is almost Rs.8 per litre and in Bangalore it is Rs.10 per litre. Given this and the premium of about 1 Lakh charged on Mid sized sedans Diesel models over petrol models, I would say it is going to take at least 70000 to 80000 kms or 4-5 years to break even if any.
It may not make more economic sense for many buyers to prefer Diesel over Petrol.

[shankar.balan]

Interesting. This price difference is narrowing month on month.

Has there been a corresponding increase in costs of freight and transportation yet?

Or are the transporters and others actually being decent for once in their lives and absorbing this impact because they've enjoyed such high margins for years...

If I am right, when Skoda first hit India in 2001-2002 - they had priced the then Octavia Petrol and Diesel versions at the same level.

So it is quite possible whenever absolute parity between Diesel and Petrol pricing is reached, that the manufacturers might still offer the choice of their vehicles in either Petrol (for the speed/ performance demons) and Diesel (for the torque boys) and actually price the two variants the same...

[greenhorn]

It seems like only yesterday that we were discussing here on team bhp how the govt was stuck in a sticky situation with the spiralling diesel vehicle sales due to the diesel subsidy, and how the govt couldnt do anything about it as touching the diesel subsidy would make inflation even worse, and we were brainstorming to find a solution of pvt diesel vehicle consumption draining the subsidy funds such as increasing taxes on diesel cars, and dual prcing - but those would have negative implications for the govt.

The judiciary seems to have taken it upon itself to resolve it ( or maybe the govt had a helping hand in it ?)

[sumeethaldankar]

Along with decreasing price gap many of the petrol models boast of claimed fuel efficiency close to 20 kmpl on the highway atleast. I am sure this is a contributing factor to the sale of petrol over diesels.

[pgsagar]

We are heading towards petrols and we are also heading towards automatics. Our driving habits are moving away from Europeans (diesel + manual) and are moving towards American/Canadian. And all this, with not so good petrol engines that most of our cars are powered with. Last 10 years of diesel rule has not seen any investment in good petrol engines in small/mid-segment cars, with the exception of Polo TSI.

About time, they did and gave us some good petrol engines.

[volkman10]

Originally Posted by pgsagar

About time, they did and gave us some good petrol engines.

Yes - you will see the TSI's and Boosterjets shortly in more products

[SoumenD]

Really hope now the manufacturers would take the petrol segment seriously and introduce something similar to the powerful FTD diesels. Else if you notice since almost a decade the petrols have been given a name-sake step-brotherly treatment.

Even the so-called premium cars(price-wise) like Elite i20/Jazz are stuck with the 1.2L NA engine. Looking forward to a bunch of Turbo-charged petrols in near future

[pgsagar]

Originally Posted by volkman10

Yes - you will see the TSI's and Boosterjets shortly in more products

Originally Posted by SoumenD

Really hope now the manufacturers would take the petrol segment seriously and introduce something similar to the powerful FTD diesels. Else if you notice since almost a decade the petrols have been given a name-sake step-brotherly treatment.

Even the so-called premium cars(price-wise) like Elite i20/Jazz are stuck with the 1.2L NA engine. Looking forward to a bunch of Turbo-charged petrols in near future

Exactly. Manufacturers are making petrol cars as just also-rans. It's there just to cater to someone who is averse to diesel cars for NVH or whose monthly run is small. But what a petrol buyer gets is a smooth petrol engine with not much else. A wheezy tiny engine which gets smoked by every other diesel car of the same class. We see in almost all car reviews of bi-engine cars where the reviewer invariably says diesel is stonker while petrol variant is terrible to drive.

But once we have good engines in place, things will change. Today no one would pick a diesel Polo over TSI Polo , unless one has higher monthly usage.

[teemus]

It's true that the break-even point of diesel vis-a-vis petrol has gone up by quite a few notches due to lesser cost differential between both the fuels; still, there are some diesel cars which are simply hoot to drive and the FTD is simply unmatched. All this while being pocket friendly to say the least.

S-Cross 1.6, Figo 1.5D, i20 Diesel just to name a few.

Sometimes, it just comes down to the awesome feel good factor that you visit the fuel station far less than the respective petrol car.