India’s largest carmaker continues to have a problem of plenty, as Maruti Suzuki still holds well over 2 lakh orders for its passenger vehicle line-up. Riding the wave of momentum built up over the festive period, Maruti shipped more utility vehicles last month, but availability of popular models, such as the Ertiga, remains constrained. At present, the company holds a little more than 2.06 lakh open bookings across its portfolio, nearly a third of which – around 67,000 bookings – are for the Ertiga MPV alone. From those, over 70 per cent of all pending Ertiga orders – amounting to roughly 49,000 bookings – are for the CNG version of the MPV, production of which is still hampered by component shortages, confirmed a senior Maruti Suzuki official.
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“For the Ertiga, we have around 67,000 pending orders. It has eased off a little bit – pending orders had earlier crossed the 1 lakh mark. From July, we substantially raised output for the Ertiga, but right now, the number of pending orders is high and we continue to focus on improving production in order to bring down the waiting periods. We had an issue with component availability [for CNG models] in November”, Shashank Srivastava, Senior Executive Officer, Marketing and Sales, Maruti Suzuki India, told carandbike during a media interaction.
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The Ertiga is the most affordable CNG-powered MPV on sale in India.
On average, the waiting period for the Ertiga is around four to six months, but the CNG variants command an even higher waiting period of eight to nine months, stretching to even a year in some locations. So severely limited are supplies of the CNG model, that Toyota – which sells a rebadged version of the Ertiga, named the ‘Rumion’ – has temporarily closed order books for the Rumion CNG.
The Ertiga CNG, which has an ARAI-certified fuel efficiency figure of 26.11 kilometres per kg, is currently offered in two manual transmission variants – VXI (O), priced at Rs 10.73 lakh, and the ZXI (O), priced at Rs 11.83 lakh (all prices, ex-showroom), which makes it the most affordable CNG-powered MPV on sale in the country.
