Maruti eyes auto transmission technology across all segments

Revealing further details about the company’s plans to expand the reach of its automatic variants, executive director (engineering) of Maruti Suzuki India, CV Raman told Financial Express, “We are watching the market; we will definitely bring in these technologies. We want to make sure that each of the segments where we are, we do offer this kind of technology.” 

The company is also planning to make the technology more appealing for the masses as well. “We are making sure that some two-pedal technology is available in each segment, so that people have the choice. We are also trying to make it affordable,” said Raman.

The Alto K10 and Celerio use a Magneti Marelli-sourced AMT unit. The sales of the automatic versions comprise close to 25% of the total sales of the models since their launch. In the case of the latter, the AMT variants account for about 40% of the total sales. The success has encouraged Maruti to extend the technology to other models and recently, the company launched the WagonR AMT.

Typically, the auto gear-shift variant of a Maruti Suzuki model is priced around Rs 30,000-R50,000 higher as compared to manual transmission variant while a CVT variant (a higher version of automatic) has a price difference of around Rs 90,000-R100,000 than the comparable manual transmission variant. 

Maruti is likely to keep AMT technology to the mass market models while the premium offerings are expected to get the CVT technology.