BMW To Introduce Petrol Engines Across Portfolio

After recently introducing petrol motors on a handful of its popular cars in India, the country’s third largest luxury carmaker BMW said on Thursday that it plans to introduce gasoline engines across its portfolio by next year. The engines will be sourced from domestic manufacturer Force Motors.

"We are working towards having petrol variants for all our models by next year. As of now we have only limited petrol models. We offer petrol models in the 3- and 5-Series and also in the X3 and X5 Series," BMW India acting president, Frank Emanuel Schloeder said on the sidelines of the Mini Clubman launch. 

Speaking to PTI later, he declined to give a break-up of diesel and petrol model sales or elaborate more on the petrol plan except saying that they would have to have a second assembly line with this plan.

Luxury carmakers in India were severely affected after the Supreme Court ordered a ban on the registration of new 2000cc and above cars in the Delhi-NCR. The blanket ban was lifted in August when manufacturers finally agreed to pay a one per cent green cess to cover up for the pollution.

The likes of Mercedes-Benz and Audi were among the worst hit as a result of this ban, but BMW was able to fend off the consequences with various products falling outside the banned displacement range. 

But the company denied to comment on the numbers as Schloeder said, "We don't have so much decline and can't quantify how much." According to reports, BMW has fallen behind its German rivals – Merc and Audi – in the pecking order in India with under 7,000 units sold in the previous calendar year.