Maruti Suzuki expects sales of vehicles with auto gear shift to pick up in India

Maruti Suzuki India expects sales of its vehicles with auto gear shift to pick up due to the increasing congestion across cities in India, according to company Senior Executive Officer, Marketing & Sales Shashank Srivastava told PTI news agency. The automaker introduced the auto gear shift (AGS) technology that relieves drivers from manually changing gears using the clutch, for the first time in 2013-14 on its hatchback Celerio. So far MSI has cumulatively sold 7.74 lakh units of such vehicles across its portfolio. There are nine models of this auto gear shift models--Celerio, Alto K10, WagonR, Dzire, Ignis, Swift, Brezza, S-Presso, and Baleno.

"After we introduced AGS, slowly we have expanded it in so many of our models. We do believe that with increased congestion, especially in urban areas, AGS is a further addition to the ease of driving. So we believe technology will pick up even further," Srivastava told PTI.

In terms of AGS penetration, he said, "It varies between 12% to 23% across the models" and the volume among individual models also "varies because of different times of introduction".

As per the company, Celerio has clocked cumulative sales of 2 lakh units of AGS, followed by WagonR at 1.39 lakh units, Swift 1.24 lakh units, Dzire 1.01 lakh units, Alto K10 68,000 units, Ignis 49,000 units, Brezza 39,000 units, S-Presso 37,000 units and Baleno 20,000 units.

On the increasing acceptance of the AGS technology, Srivastava said it is mainly due to the affordability factor. He cited the example of entry-level SUVs where the price difference between a normal transmission and AGS, is just about ₹50,000 resulting in AGS penetration of around 19%.

On the other hand, for the same type of vehicle with dual-clutch transmission (DCT) or continuously variable transmission (CVT) technology, the price difference is over ₹1.2 lakh leading to a low penetration of the automated transmission option to just about 2%.