Maruti launches country's cheapest car with automatic gear shift technology

Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) on Monday launched the country's cheapest small car with automated gear shift (AGS) technology, Alto K10, tagged at Rs 3.80 lakh (ex-showroom price in Delhi).

The new Alto K10 is available both in manual and automatic transmission variants. The manual petrol variants of the new Alto K10 are priced between Rs 3.06 lakh and Rs 3.56 lakh (ex-showroom price in Delhi), while the newly introduced compressed natural gas (CNG) version is tagged at Rs 3.82 lakh. Overall, the new Alto K10 will have six different variants and the AGS option will be available only with the top-end model priced at Rs 3.80 lakh. The previous version of the Alto K10 was priced between Rs 3.15 lakh and Rs 3.31 lakh.

The new Alto K10 has been developed at a cost of Rs 200 crore on the existing platform by engineers at Maruti Suzuki, along with their counterparts at parent Suzuki Motor Corp in Japan.

The company has tweaked the 1-litre K-series petrol engine and the new Alto K10 now offers improved fuel efficiency by about 15 per cent. While the petrol version delivers a mileage of 24.07 km per litre, the CNG variant will have a fuel economy of 32.26 km per kg.

Kenichi Ayukawa, managing director and chief executive officer, MSIL, said, "Alto K10 is the third Maruti Suzuki car within few weeks, where our suppliers and engineers have improved the fuel efficiency substantially."

Maruti Suzuki is positioning the new car as a mass market product equipped with "futuristic technology" to cater to "very demanding, value for money conscious customers". The company is looking at leveraging on the convenience factor of the AGS with high fuel efficiency levels that the new Alto K10 delivers to draw in entry-level customers.

"We have sold over 400,000 units of Alto K10 in the last four years. We expect 20 per cent of the sales of the Alto K10 to come from the AGS equipped version," added Ayukawa.

After the Celerio, the Alto K10 is the second model to be equipped with auto gear shift (AGS) feature. Going forward, the company expects AGS equipped variants would account for almost 30-40 per cent of the company's overall small car sales.

In order to meet the increasing demand for the AGS, the company is in the process of setting up a manufacturing facility with its joint venture partner Italian firm Magneti Marelli at Manesar which is estimated to start production next year.

The Alto K10 is coming at a time when MSIL's sales in the mini segment, comprising Alto and WagonR, have registered a decline of 2.6 per cent in the April-October period this financial year at 237,474 units as compared to 243,714 units sold in the year-ago period.

Last month, MSIL sold 35,753 entry-level cars, which is a drop of 9.2 per cent over the 39,379 units sold in the same month last year. Ayukawa said the new Alto K10 would help the company realise 10 per cent incremental sales of the model.