Toyota Fortuner and Innova Crysta To Get Costlier in Foreseeable Future, Reveals Company's VP

With the price gap closing between petrol and diesel, the popularity of diesel-fuelled vehicles has been declining in the Indian market. Diesel-powered cars are usually more expensive than their petrol-powered counterparts, and with the BSVI-compliant models, this gap has now widened, and might widen further over time. In fact, Toyota has recently announced that it will be increasing the prices of its diesel-powered vehicles soon.

Toyota Fortuner (left) and Innova Crysta (right)

Toyota’s two most popular vehicles – Fortuner and Innova Crysta – are available with both, petrol and diesel engine options. While the petrol motor is the same on both, a 2.7-litre naturally aspirated unit, the Fortuner comes with a 2.8-litre turbo-diesel engine and the Innova Crysta offers a 2.4-litre turbo-diesel. The naturally aspirated petrol mill is significantly cheaper to manufacture than both the diesel engines, which is reflected in the prices. According to recent reports, the current price increment was kept low in order to provide some buffer, and there might be price revisions over the course of this year.

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“In the price sensitive of entry and mid passenger car segment diesel upgrade to BS6 makes is uncompetitive against the equivalent gasoline vehicles. The difficult decision that we as manufacturer of MPV and SUV vehicles was how to price these BS6 diesel vehicles at introduction timing. In our case we had taken a decision to transfer less than 50% of BS6 upgradation cost to the market at introduction timing earlier this year. However since this is not a sustainable measure we would take a decision at appropriate time to transfer the cost to the market in a step wise manner”

Naveen Soni, Vice President, Toyota Kirloskar Motor

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During the financial year 2011-12, nearly 60 per cent of the passenger vehicle sales came from diesel-powered cars. This share has fallen significantly, to just 32 per cent in FY 2019-20. As ‘SUV’ and ‘MPV’ segments used to rely heavily on diesel-fuelled vehicle sales, they have been affected quite significantly, with the future seeming even more uncertain. It is yet to be seen if Toyota will bring newer, more powerful, and more efficient petrol engines to its line-up, just like Mahindra and Tata are planning to do. It would make sense for the company to introduce new petrol powerplants with the Innova Crysta facelift and the Fortuner update, which are slated to arrive soon in India.