Six airbags & a new engine: Maruti Suzuki drives in new Swift

Maruti Suzuki, India’s largest carmaker known for its stronghold in the hatchback segment with more than a two-thirds share of the market, on Thursday announced the launch of a new generation of its popular Swift hatchback, at a starting price of ₹6.49 lakh ex-showroom.

It launched the new Swift with six airbags as a standard offering across all its variants, marking a change in the carmaker's stance, and after fighting back regulation that could potentially make six airbags standard equipment in cars. The Swift also debuts a new Z-series 1.2 liter engine, the most fuel-efficient in its segment, with a claimed fuel efficiency of up to 25.75 kmpl.

Focus on safety

Maruti Suzuki has said it will launch all new models with six airbags as standard hereon, and address regulation-related fuel efficiency mandates by offering the new Z-series engine on more of its products.

Despite a softening of market for hatchbacks, Maruti Suzuki aims to reinvigorate interest in this segment, and draw in young buyers seeking safety and connected car technologies at competitive prices.

"The Swift model is very important for Indian markets and for the export markets. We see new customers are also showing interest in the Swift. It is a good time for us to revamp the hatchback as customer consciousness of safety, environment, and fuel efficiency is becoming high," said Hisashi Takeuchi, managing director, Maruti Suzuki.

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In FY24, the industry recorded about 1.2 million hatchback sales, with Maruti Suzuki capturing 67.5% of the market with sales of 810,000 units. The Swift itself sold over 195,000 units during this period.

Shift beyond hatchbacks

The company's focus, however, will continue to shift beyond hatchbacks. The company may not launch any new hatchback models in the near term as the market stays muted, but will keep on reviving our portfolio to keep appealing to a large existing customer base seeking to buy their first cars.

He added that Maruti Suzuki is adopting a new, more flexible production model to mitigate inventory issues associated with fluctuating demand for hatchbacks and to respond quickly as consumer demand changes. Each of Maruti Suzuki's factories will be able to produce multiple models, he said.

Takeuchi said the carmaker will seek a broader expansion into different segments where the company does not currently have a strong foothold. This could particularly include the sub-compact SUV market where Maruti Suzuki doesn't have a direct rival against products like the Hyundai Exter, Tata Punch and Mahindra's XUV3XO.

Also Read: Maruti Suzuki SUVs have surpassed competitors, but dominance is another matter

Moreover, Maruti Suzuki will look to use its newly-developed IC-engine in smaller footprint cars, instead of immediately launching hybrid models in those segments, sources in the know told Mint on condition of anonymity.

"The market size (for hatchbacks) is large. Decent volume still remains in the segment. We will maintain our hatchback play with very high market share and this situation - with other OEMs vacating the segment - is very good for us because now as others selling hatchback models, our share in the segment is very high and sooner or later, once the economy grows and people start buying hatchbacks, then our high market share will help us a lot at that time," Takeuchi said, adding that the company will eventually revamp its other hatchback models too, with minor upgrades or through major or full-model changes.

However, while the hatchback market takes three-four years to revive, the company's efforts to grow will concentrate on the SUV segment, which now accounts for more than half of the country's total passenger vehicle sales.

"We are increasing the model portfolio in other segments also. We are not only introducing new products into hatchback and the Swift, especially, is not a new model... we are only doing a full model change of our successful ongoing products, which is still generating enough volume and enough profit for the company. So it's quite natural that we will do the whole model change so that the attractiveness of the product will not disappear and we keep appealing to the customer base which still exists for these products", Takeuchi said.