Hike in petrol prices leads to increase sales of CNG-powered cars

mericar

Car makers are seeing customer preference for CNG cars after increase in petrol prices. The running cost for petrol car is Rs 5.05 whereas Rs 2.09 for CNG-run.

A long queue of vehicles at a CNG filling station in New Delhi on Friday following shortage of the gas. Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

Restricted availability of CNG stations are considered roadblock for expansion. There are 635 CNG stations in India which are very less to see 4 million cars on natural gas by 2015. The availability is limited to Delhi, Mumbai and Gujarat only.

Maruti offers CNG options in its Alto, Eeco, Estilo, Wagon R and SX4 models and projected CNG cars account 20% of total sales. Other car maker Hyundai has gas variants of i10, Santro and Accent.

New cars are fitted with CNG. If you have old car and you want to install it, then you can contact car mechanics or car service center for installing government approve CNG. Installation of CNG kits to Petrol Vehicles are under the guidance of VRDE (Government Institute) and ARAI (Automobile Institute). There are more than 20 types of Government Approved CNG Kits are available in market to install in Car and other automobiles. Various Indian Made CNG Kits are also available and certified by Government of India.

Here are some of guidelines for CNG cars:

1. Install only durable and Government Approved CNG Conversion Kits to your car.

2. CNG Kit fitting shall be from government approved fitment centers.

3. Take proper precaution and safety measures before installing a CNG Kit to your car.

4. Before selecting for a duel fuel car you should be clear that you really need Duel fuel car. If you travel more than 100 Kms per day, and you will need less luggage space and the filling stations are on the way or near-by, then go for it else think again because it doesn’t worth that extra money you spent.
5. For duel fuel car, you must run car on petrol for sometime. It has been noticed that once car owner install CNG avoid use of petrol completely, it affects engine.

6. Car servicing is required from time-to-time on regular basis for CNG cars, as Engine would have different way of consuming fuel and runs dry most of the time without petrol.

Related Links:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Auto/Car-makers-optimistic-on-future-of-CNG/Article1-836582.aspx
http://www.cng.co.in/