India’s largest Utility Vehicle (UV) maker, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has again appeared in the limelight owing to its scintillating Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV), XUV500. Speculations are making rounds of the statement that the company is planning to roll out a petrol engine model of its iconic SUV. Analysts believe that the launch of an automatic transmission model is also on the cards of M&M. Industry experts believe that the launch of two refreshed variants of XUV500 will only help M&M to hold a control over the present market share of other big brands present in the same segment.
Presently, the domestic brand has only offered a 2.2 litre diesel engine, shared from Scorpio, which is mated to a 6-speed manual gearbox. Confirming the statement, Ruzbeh Irani, the Chief Executive Officer of company, International Operations, commented that the auto major has already started working on both the mentioned updates.
Considering the development from company’s stable, the feasible question raises as what for the M&M is planning to introduce a petrol model of its well-reckoned XUV500. The answer lies in the fact that it is possible the new model is not especially targeted for the Indian market and rather will be developed to cater a share in the bigger auto markets, wherein diesel models are probably not preferred much against the petrol ones, particularly in the passenger car segment. For instance, in US, diesel is expensive than petrol and thus, individuals there have a penchant for petrol models as they are economical. Following the same trend, the auto market of Australia also favours petrol run crossovers.
Considering the prospect of Mahindra, XUV500 is only the single model in company’s product portfolio, which has the potential to carve a decent market share for itself in US. On the other hand, the auto major is also working on an automatic transmission avatar of XUV500. Sharing his views on this topic, Irani confirmed that the development process of an automatic gearbox model is in full swing; however the launch of the same will take around a couple of years. It is believed that the company is working in a direction to incorporate a modern 6-speed automatic transmission system within the XUV500. Reportedly, the auto maker is not designing its own transmission systems and instead is sourcing the same from other vendors.
