It is pretty well known that Maruti is planning to enter the Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) segment to snatch Tata’s and Mahindra’s market share. MotorBash also has the exclusive spyshots of the vehicle which is codenamed as ‘Y9T’.
The biggest point of interest for us is the 0.8L diesel engine it will come equipped with because this is the same engine that will propel Maruti Suzuki’s other smaller cars. And now, there are new details that have been busted by Autocar.
The two-cylinder, 800cc diesel engine is being developed in house with Suzuki’s help at its facility in Gurgaon, and is rumoured to be almost ready and it is being rigorously tested. The engine will go under production in December and can be expected to be seen chugging cars by early 2015. Interestingly it is a turbocharged unit.
Maruti has selected Turbo Energy Ltd. (TEL), based in Chennai as the exclusive supplier for the turbochargers for this engine. The turbochargers are 100 per cent localised and will be locally manufactured. TEL has been apparently working on the turbo for this engine for nearly one and a half years.
Maruti is planning for a production capacity of 80,000 units per year ie around 6600 engines per month. We are sure once Maruti plonks it on the small passenger cars, they will have to increase the capacity manifold.
A 2-cylinder diesel engine on a passenger car doesn’t go down well when we think of it. But being a crazy company, we understand Maruti Suzuki will not offer a sub-par engine and will definitely work on its NVH levels.
Related: Maruti to Launch Eeco Diesel; Will Replace Omni Finally!
