New Delhi: Every drop of fuel counts in the Indian car market. Vehicular efficiency is fast becoming the overriding factor for selections of new cars by the customers and now companies have started a high-pitched drive to get an extra mile from that every drop.

Now in India, every car comes with a definitive fuel efficiency rating that also determines its success in the market. Largest selling car, the Maruti Alto hatchback had reigned the market backed by the tag of being the most fuel efficient delivering 19.7 km/litre since its launch in 1999.

Backed by low-combustion engines, Maruti has been harping on the higher fuel efficiency of its cars for long. To combat the rising competition it launched a new variant of its decade lime Alto adding a new 1 litre K Series engine, that took the fuel efficiency to a higher 20.2 km/ litre.

While second largest carmaker Hyundai Motor’s refreshed its i10 hatchback and loaded it with a new 1.2 litre engine that delivers a even higher mileage of 20.36 km per litre, to stake claim of being the most fuel efficient petrol car in the compact segment.

“The new engine is extremely frugal in fuel consumption and has been tweaked to maintain a fine-balance of economy, power and performance,” Hyundai Motor’s director (marketing & sales) Arvind Saxena said.

The India auto industry is gradually moving towards the fuel efficiency regime where carmaker delivering higher fuel efficiency like its peers in other parts of the world would grab more customer eyeballs. China already has a fuel-efficiency requirement of over 15 km/litre for every car sold, while Japan and Australia, the current standard is already 15km/litre and is slated to rise to 18.5 km/litre by the year 2012.

With fuel efficiency directly linked to the cost of running of cars, the new vehicles are being loaded with smaller engines to consume lesser fuel and churn out more distance without compromising any power. Newly launched cars like the Volkswagen Polo and Nissan Micra deliver more than 18 km/litre of fuel, much more than its competitors like 17.7km/litre of Maruti Ritz and 16.8 km/litre of Tata Motor Indica Xeta.

“We had the fuel tag consumption in mind when we were testing the Polo in India. So we choose on of the most fuel efficient engine from Volkswagen stable that we tweaked to minimize fuel consumption,” a senior executive of Volkswagen said preferring anonymity.

Country’s largest auto company, Tata Motor’s has to its credit having the most fuel efficient car the Nano, that runs delivers 23.7 km for every litre of fuel, has also launched the country’s most fuel efficiency sedan, the Indigo CS that run 23 km/litre of fuel. Its punchline of 23km to a litre of fuel and “most fuel efficient sedan in the country” was enough to grab maximum customer eyeballs as its sedan sales doubled to 34,988 cars in April August this year from 15,078 cars sold last year.

These changes witnessed in the Indian car market comes after as in the past many of the fuel-guzzling vehicles like Maruti Gypsy, Fiat Palio and Ford Mondeo eventually lost market as customers have rejected them for their high running cost of fuel.
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New Delhi: German carmaker Volkswagen took advertising to a new level with an innovative audio advertisement in print to create a buzz for its entry level sedan Vento.

Using a voice-recorded device pasted on two English dailies, the company sprang a surprise to many readers in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai on a campaign for which it is believed to have spent up to Rs 5 crore.

“Twenty two lakh chips were specially sourced for the one time exercise. We have been working on this for the last six months in order to bring out the advertisement,” Mediacom Managing Director Divya Gururaj told PTI.

Mediacom manages the media planning operations for Volkswagen, while the creatives are being handled by advertising agency DDB Mudra.

According to Gururaj, a huge workforce was deployed by the publishers of the two newspapers to bundle 22 lakh devices that played the audio version of an advertisement.

“Our aim was to be able to emotionally connect to our customers with this product and what better way than being able to directly speak to them with the aid of a newspaper,” Volkswagen Group Sales India, Head of Marketing for passenger cars Lutz Kothe said. VW described the campaign as “world’s first talking newspaper with Volkswagen Vento”.

The company last month announced the launch of Vento in India priced between Rs 6.99 lakh and Rs 7.99 lakh (ex- showroom Delhi). According to branding experts it is a great idea that has been executed the carmaker.

“Given the fact that people do not buy a car for one advertisement, it is a fantastic start by the company and it has been able to create a buzz about the product. It is surely a bold move to spend that kind of money on one day,” Madison Group Chairman Sam Balsara said.

New Delhi: Tata Motors is understood to be mulling a hike in the price of its passenger cars, Indica and Indigo, by a “significant” amount with effect from October 1 next month.

According to an internal communication circulated among top Tata Motors officials, the company plans to hike prices to minimise the impact of rising input costs, particularly tyres.

“Significant price increase in Indicas and Indigos from October 1,” the internal communication said. When contacted, a Tata Motors spokesperson declined to comment on the development. Another auto giant, Hyundai Motors, hiked the prices of its vehicles from this month.

Hyundai Motor India increased the prices of its products across models by up to 1.2 per cent from September 1.

The upward revision in the prices was necessary to offset rising input costs, specially that of commodities. Hyundai sells cars such as Santro, Verna, i10, i20 and Sonata.

The country’s largest car-maker, Maruti Suzuki, had also announced an increase in prices, driven by high commodity prices, in August. Maruti had hiked the prices of all of its models, except the Alto, by up to Rs 7,500.