Cabriolet : the convertible car’s for India



One of the major attraction of 12th Delhi Auto Expo 2014 was this Cabriolet – the convertible from Audi - A3 Cabriolet. This Cabriolet will come powered by a 1.8-litre TSI petrol engine based on the Volkswagen group’s MQB platform.

 

Audi has stated that it is not looking at large volumes with this car; it’s just to add a bit of sex appeal and enhance the appeal of the A3 brand. Volumes for the A3 Cabriolet are too small to locally assemble it here in India, it will come here as a full export. So, expect a price tag of around Rs 35-40 lakh. 

 

In 11th Delhi Auto Expo 2012, we saw this concept convertible from Maruti, the A-Star Cabriolet which sparked the hope of Indian buyers to get these Cabriolet’s or the convertible’s in the hot selling super-mini low budget cars segment in India which can give good numbers. This car perfectly displays the positive intentions of the auto giant from India to tread into newer paths so that it can stay ahead of competition – just like Celerio with AMT (EZ-Drive) at this year’s show, but we don’t know when will these type of concepts will ever make into production for Indian buyers.

 

Exploring internet one can find many pictures of concepts or production versions of convertibles in super-mini segment from Suzuki, GM, Nissan, Hyundai and others and this can be a new segment which can be matured in India if some of these companies do launch the convertibles versions of their popular hatches like A-star, Micra, Spark, i10Grand. They have already started offering Automatics and Sunroofs…. Why not convertible’s also ?

Maruti Suzuki Celerio EZ-Drive: a step in the right direction !

 

I feel here is the right move by Suzuki, to give the taste of Auto-transmission technology to Indian customers at affordable cost. They claim to give the ease of driving an automatic - matching the fuel efficiency of a manual transmission with its revolutionary AMT technology. Suzuki’s Auto Gear Shift technology is based on electronic control unit which drives the precision hydraulic actuator to control the clutch engagement and the gear shifting at optimal timings mating to the engine sweat spots for optimal  fuel efficiency.

Best part of this car is, that it provides manual gear shift – like the paddle shift in high end cars, matches the fuel efficiency of a manual transmission and the AMT enabled manual gear box did not add much extra weight or cost to the car price like the regular automatics. 

As the Indian car market (6^th largest in the world) is evolving, this introduction of AMT by Suzuki in Celerio will help the buyers shift from pure manual to this semi-automatic transmission technology with low differential cost of about 30-40K INR against the current delta of other type of more matured automatics which add up anything form 70k-1L in the cost.

It will give sometime to the good DSG/CVT based auto-transmission systems to improve further on their fuel efficiency and then the delta of moving from AMT to fully automatic technologies like (DSG/CVT) will further reduced to another 30-40K INR - which Indian buyers might be interested to invest in when they plan their next car after AMT powered Celerio or other cars with similar technology which are expected to be launched soon in the Indian market.

Thus as a strategy, to help Indian car buyers graduate from old manual transmission cars to fully Automatic by Suzuki Celerio EZ-Drive is a step in the right direction.