Maruti Suzuki thinks green, revs up eco-friendly initiatives

Being World Environment Day today, India’s largest carmaker, Maruti Suzuki has said that it will continue to work in the direction of bringing down vehicle emissions as one of its several green initiatives.

The company has been able to reduce the weighted average of carbon dioxide emissions by over 11.6 percent in the past five years, thanks to its persistent efforts in the area of fuel efficiency improvements, reduction in exhaust emissions and development of alternate fuel products (CNG variants, the hybrid Suzuki Swift Range Extender) during the period. 

While the fleet emissions (weighted average CO2 index) stood at 96 grams per kilometre in 2009-10, the same was recorded at 84.8 grams per kilometre in 2014-15.

Highlighting Maruti Suzuki’s focus towards environment-friendly products, Kenichi Ayukawa, managing director and CEO, said: “Maruti Suzuki has always been known for class-leading fuel efficiency. In the last few years, the company has worked systematically towards reducing vehicle emissions and achieved new benchmarks. The recent new models, product upgrades and even minor changes have been substantially more fuel efficient than the outgoing ones. With automatic gearshift technology (AMT), the company is able to offer the convenience of an automatic without the need to emit more. Going forward, we will continue our focus on investing in new technologies and strengthen our capability to bring down emissions per vehicle by enhancing fuel efficiency of our cars.”

According to the company, during FY2014-15, the three most fuel efficient cars belonged to Maruti Suzuki – Celerio, Swift Dzire and Ciaz. The company is known for several innovations in this area such as introducing changes in engine hardware to improve thermal efficiency and engine calibration, optimising transmission gear ratios for better drive and fuel efficiency, improved aerodynamic styling and weight reduction initiatives, making compact combustion chamber, enhancing compression ratio on gasoline engine and many others.

The first company to offer factory-fitted CNG kits in its models in 2006, Maruti Suzuki currently offers six factory fitted CNG (dual fuel – CNG + petrol) models – Alto, Alto K-10, Celerio, Wagon R, Eeco and Ertiga. Among these, while the Alto K-10 delivers best fuel efficiency of 32.26km per kg, the Celerio and Alto stand second and third respectively.

Furthermore, the company has also developed a hybrid Suzuki Swift Range Extender model, which runs on a battery as well as a 658cc internal combustion petrol engine (borrowed from Suzuki Japan). The official communication stated that “the vehicle functions like a pure battery electric vehicle (BEV) for customers who commute short distances. Once the battery power is depleted, the on-board IC engine starts functioning and runs the generator for supplying power to the electric motor.”

The Range Extender, which can be charged at any household power point, can run up to 25.5km on a single charge of its lithium ion battery. Additionally, the vehicle can deliver a mileage of close to 23km per litre of petrol. The production-ready model has been developed in India and all the major electric gear (such as the electric motor, battery and other components) required for this project were imported from Japan and other countries.

It can be recalled that Autocar Professional first broke the story about Maruti Suzuki planning to supply a few Swift Range Extender cars as a fleet to the government as a part of its pilot plan in March 2014. The project, however, kept getting delayed due to multiple reasons.

The Swift Range Extender will be positioned as a crucial project by Maruti Suzuki under the government’s National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020 (NEMMP).

At the Geneva Motor Show recently, Suzuki Motor Corporation had showcased three new technologies including a new-generation lightweight platform, a new downsized direct-injection turbo petrol engine called Boosterjet and the SHVS mild hybrid system.

In an official communication, Maruti Suzuki mentioned that “These future technologies will bring down emissions while raising vehicle performance. These technologies could find relevance in India and the Company may explore these options as per customer requirements.”

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