Automatics in India

by Kanishk Naithani Automobile Blogger

In the past decade, the Indian customers usually refrained from buying any automatic cars. The reason for that was automatic cars were extremely expensive when compared to their manual counterparts. Also automatic cars were extremely expensive to maintain. Hyundai launched their i10 automatic but it didn’t receive very good response. The technology wasn’t really accepted back then in India.

Then Maruti Suzuki launched their Celerio in 2014. The selling point of this car was it was also sold as an automatic but with marginal increase in price, almost similar fuel efficiency as the manual and also were cheap to maintain. The reason for all this was because Maruti launched this car with AMT (Automated Manual Transmission).

AMT has become a household name now, but in 2014 it was an all new thing. People were fascinated with this technology. The sales of Celerio rose only because of this transmission. This particular transmission worked on the same principle as a manual, only with the exception of adding an automatic clutch which engaged with the RPM of the engine.

Many firms embraced this technology and brought many vehicles with AMT. Tata launched their Tiago AMT, Renault launched Kwid and Duster AMTs. Soon many people were buying automatic vehicles. People began to realise the benefits of automatic cars. The automatics, which were usually seen in the high end cars, were now in many budget vehicles.

In the major cities, like Delhi and Mumbai, the sales of automatic vehicles rose manifold. The reason for that was automatics provided convenience in stop and go traffic and since the AMTs were easy on the pocket, it didn’t make much sense buying a manual unless one was passionate about driving.

India is indeed going for the automatics and if one comes up with a technology much more efficient than the AMTs, then the sales of the automatics cars would surely rise.

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