Team-BHP - Maruti Swift diesel @ Rs 4.68 lakh

Well the difference is seemingly 1 lac, however if you compare Lxi to Vdi (for a normal user) then the difference is Rs. 139,000 which when paid via finance costs increases to Rs. 191,820 @ 14% interest. Add to that Diesel maintenance. Even if you were to compare Vxi to Vdi the time it would take to negate price difference of Diesel would be 5.78 years.

Tomorrow Govt might even remove Diesel cost advantage to a normal consumer and allow it to be used only for commercial uses. If that happens in 3 yrs from now, then you haven't taken full cost advantage even.

To take the advantage of Diesel's lower cost, will a normal user pay so much? I still think that the price difference is too much and cannot be justified for a normal user.

Here are updated computations if annual mileage is 17580 km (my own example)

On a cursory look, there seems to be a bit of double counting there... if you are considering the excess cost of diesel (i.e. the diff in OTR prices), shouldn't you strip the principal portion from the Extra EMI figure and take only the interest part into consideration?

Also, My guess is the difference in mileage between the petrol and diesel will be higher than 4kmpl.... what say people? Some people are already claiming an average of 19-20kmpl from the diesel in the city and 24kmpl on the highways... even considering figures of 18 and 22 respectively and your example of 40%-60% city and highway, average comes to about 20.5.

Good effort however... are you an MBA by any chance?:)

Hey you are 100% right Tech, people blindly go for Swift D, car manufacturers/executives icluding Maruti cheating the customers, I saw few guys buying Diesel cars although they commute less and they don't need pick up offered by new gen. deisel engine but still baught
diesel because of great FE!

Swift Diesel returns around 18kmpl as FE in City and 22kmpl on highway, only few guys get more FE which is common for any car, but 99% the FE for Swift D is 17 to 22 kmpl. Few guys lesser than that.

Its ideal car who would like to invest more while buying and pay less for Fuel, but believe me Swift P makes lot of sense if you wanna buy Swift.

Swift D is good buy if we travel mroe than 100km every day as average!

Ravi.

i am not commenting about the Swift Diesel in particular. just generally about diesel vs petrol.

one angle is that the extra premium you pay for diesel gets spread over your EMI's and you are unlikely to feel the pinch. but you will definitely feel the pinch each time you top up. its also a psychological thing, you see. each time you wanna go on a long drive just to unwind, you don't want to worry about how much the drive is going to cost you. might not be a consideration for some, but it is for some.

apart from the fact that the diesel tankful will cost much less than a petrol tankful (~ Rs.500 less, per delhi fuel rates. that alone is 16.~ litres of diesel or 11.~ litres of petrol), for the same tankful diesel will go much further.

I do see that your calculations are quite detailed. but are you sure it takes 7 years to recover the cost of diesel with a yearly running of 17K+ kms ???

its just that diesel is inherently a more efficient fuel and with improving levels of refinement and better diesel technology, diesel makes a very strong case for itself. I mean even 5 yrs back, who would have thought we would have access to a world class common rail diesel in a hatchback ???

p.s.
also is not your extra EMI for the diesel being taken care of by the monthly fuel savings itself ???

additionally, you may not travel 100 kms daily. but if you are the kind of family that does outstations even every other weekend, or interstates for that matter, then the diesel makes hell of a difference.

Agreed. But money which is paid for Petrol goes away to Bank. What are you left with? EMIs are going out each month also. Whether you pay to Petrol Pumps or to Banks, you are left with nothing.

Also note that I compared the lowest variant of Petrol i.e. Lxi to Vdi. You can assume a marginally lesser time to break even if you compared Petrol Vxi to Petrol Vdi.

7.63359 yrs :Shockked: to break even to be precise on the basis of Delhi's lower normal petrol costs of Rs. 44.5. For rest of India, it takes 5.3114 years to break even when petrol costs Rs. 52. OK I am now also taking a higher average FE of Swift Diesel at 19 kmpl. and Swift Petrol's at 13 kmpl.

Extra EMI for Diesel is taken care of by Fuel Savings is only a gimmick. Please see below chart to see that your actual monthly outflow is almost same. So even if it is outstation weekends you end up spending the same amount more or less.

Even if you have many weekends and you clock 25000 km per year (2083 km per month), then if Petrol costs 52 and Diesel costs 32, even then it will take 3.735 years to break even using the calculations logic shown below.

What if you decide not to use the car ? Then all the extra money spent goes waste ! And what if tomorrow the Diesel FE drops to 13-14 in city? What if the quiet diesel engine becomes noisier? Like the Accent Crdi or maybe even more? I assumed only marginal Diesel maintenance costs of Rs. 30000 more. What if Maruti charges hell lot for fixing this awarded engine? Hope it never happens.

ImageShack - Hosting :: swiftownershipcostsfo8.jpg
or
http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/484...ipcostsfo8.jpg

Whew !!! Those calculations were hard work. There may be suggestions to these calculations, but more or less these are quite close to real life situation. If you think calculations are not correct anywhere, please let me know. I ignored some points as well like finance opportunity costs because you could have invested the amount in shares or mutual funds.

By the way I cancelled Maruti Swift VDI booking :Cheering: and saved hard earned money owing partly to huge costs and rising price increases as well as huge waiting periods (Is Maruti crazy?) . It is not cost effective for me for my kind of running. Petrol is the way for me. Smooth , Quiet and Dream like. Not torquier....

Probably we shall see many Diesel Swift Taxis in near future, because you need more than 30000 km per year clocking to make sense. What's going to happen in future???

Maruti is taking advantage because there is no market player in this segment. That's it. Bad pricing Maruti!!! Add to that long waiting periods and increase in prices ??? I'm no fool. Customer is no fool. Maruti just needs some competition. Then they will come with discounts, like their old marketing tactics. Seems like lessons have still not been learnt from Baleno. I say it even though I like Maruti. And that's another unbiased view from Tech !

I bought swift VXI over VDI because

my monthly running would be around 1200 kms(weekend and highway) so i am safely assuming an avg of 13. VDI might give me an avg of 19.

monthly running cost VXI: (1200/13)*51 = 4700
VDI: (1200/19)*35 = 2200

Difference = 2500 per month.

Where as if i go for VDI, i have to pay extra 1 lakh as loan. for which EMI will be 2300+ (for 5 year loan)

so if i go for VDI, i ll be saving only around 200 per month.

If i plan to keep the car for say 5 years, i ll be saving only 12000

Being a new driver, i dont know about the maintanance costs..but my basic knowledge says its more for diesel.

so there is hardly any savings if i go for diesel..so why wait in the long queue lol:

diesel in india is highly s[COLOR=black][FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]ubsidized [/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR]compared to other countries where the prices are almost similar...Also, if everyone starts buying diesel cars..it wont take long for people like chidambaram to make us suffer by adding some sort of tax.

If govt removes the s[COLOR=black][FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]ubsidy on diesel or introduce two types of diesel for personal and transportation use(its already there in some countries)..then even this price advantage is gone..[/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=black][FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=black][FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]So i feel that for a low monthly usage, its not worth going for diesel...as it hardly saves anything..[/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=black][FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=black][FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]just a piece of thought..[/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cartech (Post 398901)

@Tech, nice calculations! Though it is early: What would be resale value difference between Petrol & Diesel Swifts at time point of 3 years, 5 years? IMO This should also be taken int account.

Well If we compare with resale values for Accent Crdi, Ford Fiesta TCDi Diesel, Tata Indica Diesel, this is what is found for resale values of cars in a good condition when they are sold personally not to dealers ( because if sold to dealers, then the drop is 5-10% more) -

Resales Values of Diesel Cars
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Model..............................2yrs........... .........5yrs...............................Approx Price
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Accent............................26..%........... ...........35%..................................70 0,000
Ford..Fiesta....................31%............... .....New..Model..............................800,0 00
Tata..Indica....................32%............... .........53%...................................400 ,000
So Estimated drop in value for Swift in good condition --->
Swift Vdi........................30%.................... ....37%-40%............................550,000

So loss in Swift Vdi is in range of Rs. 2,20,000 to 3,00,000 in a period of 5 yrs. Which is why small cars like WagonR / Santro etc lose least amount of money in depreciation.

For Petrol -
Accent GLE drops 46 % in 2 yrs !!! and 55 % in 5 yrs
Swift Petrol drops 11% in 1 yr and 18% in 2 yrs
WagonR drops 28% in 3 yrs
Santro drops 30% or more in 3 yrs

Well I have done enough of maths here and above only to justify that lower cost of Diesel does not really translates to savings or justifies that you will go out to long drives and so on. CNG / LPG is better for that and Santro CNG with company fitted CNG may be a better option (Read the other thread which is going on).

Maruti has on purpose put such a big amount difference so as to protect its Petrol model. But still their huge investment on the Diesel plant will not reap revenues at such high cost. Maybe the taxi segment will opt for Vdi or if you have to go to Punjab / Pune etc daily / weekly. Another set of people will be Diesel Torque lovers and the Enthusiasts on the Team BHP Forum.

If your runnings are 500 km per month and petrol costs 51 Rs then to justify the Petrol Vdi it will take close to 12 yrs to break even. If running is 1000 km then it takes 6 yrs to break even assuming mileage of Petrol Vxi to be 13 kmpl. and Diesel at 19 kmpl.

Even if Swift Diesel returns 25 kmpl mileage and petrol returns 14 kmpl BEST mileage, still it will take 3.8 years to break even. With new cars doling out each 6 months, will you wait for 4 years? The new Santro in Oct, New Getz Diesel, Logan, Skoda Fabia, Toyotas and Honda Jazz and other European brands are all too exciting.

Bu the way if Petrol prices rise faster than Diesel then the break even period will decrease.

It is really worthy to save money from Rising Fuel costs and spend it elsewhere - in property, shares, mutual funds, or even donate and help the poor / old men.