Alternative fuel enjoys the advantage

Since the oil price is soaring nearly $ 150 a barrel, Indian automobile manufacturers have started offering alternative energy versions to the weary and vexed customers.

Here are some from the latest:

Hyundai Motor India, on Monday announced  that its accent model  will be available  in the compressed natural gas (CNG) variant too.

Maruti Suzuki India has already announced on Thursday to offer Maruti 800 Duo, a new fuel variant that runs on petrol as well as Liquefied Petroleum Gas.

Alternate fuel variants seem to be the answer to the looming energy crisis.While petrol prices were increasing globally, CNG prices  last month dropped from Rs 19.20 to Rs 18.90.With petrol crossing the mark of Rs 50 per litre, alternate fuels seem to be the viable option.CNG brings the running cost of  the vehicle down by almost 75 % and also enjoys the added advantage of  being green fuel, say analysts.

Environment friendliness of these fuels is also likely to rope in more customers in the wake of rising awareness towards global warming.Apart from these alternative fuels, electric vehicles sector is also picking up.

The national market for two wheelers is expected to reach 1.6 lakh units in 2008-2009 as against the 70,000 units in 2007-08.The running costs of these vehicles is almost one –tenth of the petrol driven vehicles claim manufacturers.

Hero Electric, which has launched electric scooters priced at Rs 30,000, is expecting to make merry in the oil crisis.The compmay which has sold 21,000 scooters in 2007-08, is targeting sales of  70,000 units during 2008-09.

According to Ms. Vaishali Raju, auto analyst, Angel Broking said variants running on alternate fuels would gradually become more and more popular among the customers. She added that the rising fuel prices  would make them the preferable option very soon,

As far as Maruti is concerned  it had alredy introduced LPG variants for Omni in 2004, Wagan R in 2006 and as already said the latest LPG variant is Maruti 800 Duo.

Today the LPG variants constitute around 23 % of  national sales for these two models. Hyundai also introduced the CNG variant of Santro last year and it is doing well.

Economy cars are not the only ones shifting to alternate fuels.The CNG variant  of Mercedes-Benz was also introduced in India last week.