[engine_charan]

Its good to hear that the petrol prices have come down and I think this is to divert people from the Budget 2016 which was presented today. I have a petrol two wheeler and Diesel Car, so it is a win-win situation. Hope they keep the petrol price at this pace and not increase it when Global crude oil prices go up.

[gsurya]

Apparently, this Govt earned about 50K crores from fuel taxes & about 40k crores have been allocated to the important rural social scheme MNREGA.

I didnt see an estimate of how much the new cess on cars will contribute to the exchequer.

Cant wait for GST to come soon enough so that all these silly cesses & tax tweaking can end so that Govt is forced to to focus on big ticket reforms.

[Turbanator]

Looks this sort of pricing is like musical chair for manufacturers - they don't know what sort of engines should they produce - after additional surcharge in budget now comes increase in Diesel prices , I think its time to start investing in hybrid vehicles.

[bhandary]

Today the hybrid cars are expensive and out of reach of many people. Unless the cost of the hybrid cars do not come down, the sales will be poor.

[sgiitk]

Originally Posted by 1lokesh

Petrol price cut by Rs 3.02/Litre. That's a good news after a long time.
Not a good news for Diesel vehicle owners though. Prices hiked by Rs 1.47/Litre

Originally Posted by nik hill

This is really crazy.
How can the prices move in opposite directions that too by such a large difference.

I am sure the old argument of International Price parity will be trotted out. Maybe they are trying to garner money for the Euro-VI refineries. Diesel will be far tougher to clean up than petrol, so want the charge accordingly.

To me this plus a higher cress on Diesel vehicles (and SUVs) show that the govt may be trying to nudge the market towards petrols (and electrics/hybrids which may get tax cuts).

[girishglg]

Just checked the petrol prices in the Indian oil website for Bangalore -

Petrol 58.99
Diesel 48.57

Source -

https://www.iocl.com/Products/gasoline.aspx
https://www.iocl.com/Products/HighSpeedDiesel.aspx

[King_pin09]

Originally Posted by sgiitk

I am sure the old argument of International Price parity will be trotted out. Maybe they are trying to garner money for the Euro-VI refineries. Diesel will be far tougher to clean up than petrol, so want the charge accordingly.

To me this plus a higher cress on Diesel vehicles (and SUVs) show that the govt may be trying to nudge the market towards petrols (and electrics/hybrids which may get tax cuts).

Sorry to differ in opinion sir,

Both Petrol and Diesel along with other by products such as kerosene, tar etc., are obtained from the same crude oil. What differentiates them from each other is the level of distillation they pass through. in other terms Petrol is obtained at a higher level of refinement than diesel from the same batch of crude oil input.

So in a nut shell for a given batch of crude oil lesser quantity of petrol is generated than diesel. Thus one litre of petrol commands higher price as against one litre of diesel. Thus Diesel may not essentially require additional efforts in refinement.

[smekad]

I guess now with the reduced difference in the fuel prices and additional cess on diesel cars, we will start seeing buyers more inclined towards Petrols cars..

[sgiitk]

Originally Posted by King_pin09

Both Petrol and Diesel along with other by products such as kerosene, tar etc., are obtained from the same crude oil. What differentiates them from each other is the level of distillation they pass through. in other terms Petrol is obtained at a higher level of refinement than diesel from the same batch of crude oil input.

So in a nut shell for a given batch of crude oil lesser quantity of petrol is generated than diesel. Thus one litre of petrol commands higher price as against one litre of diesel. Thus Diesel may not essentially require additional efforts in refinement.

Not exactly in GB, D, CH, US Diesel is somewhat costlier than petrol. Getting Diesel up to Euro-VI may even require some new refineries, since the current ones may not be upgradeable to the levels required. As of now our PSU refineries are not able to even produce enough of the BS-IV Diesel. When you go to Euro-IV V or VI levels production costs of Diesel skyrocket, and yields drop. What you say is true of 'normal' stuff but not to specifications which are tight.

[romeomidhun]

Glad that the difference between Petrol and Diesel is coming down to Rs 10/-

But think about the dilemma of the manufacturers! Whether to concentrate on Petrol or Diesel models, whether to concentrate on the latest trend of SUVs or stick to small cars, whether to go for hybrid models or not...

Good for manufacturers concentrating on small Petrol cars like Maruti and Hyundai.

[autobahnjpr]

With the difference in the fuel price narrowing between petrol and diesel, it now makes much more sense to buy a petrol car. Service class people who migrated to diesel due to the obvious economic reasons should now be moving back to petrol land and only business class people who travel a lot would now find any economic sense in going for diesel.

[vishusingh]

I'm going to move to a petrol car after 4 years of diesel use mainly because of a lack of options in diesel automatics in my budget of around 10L, will move from i20 CRDi to an Honda Amaze iVTec AT most probably.

The new price changes are most welcome, this brings down the gap in running costs making a shift to petrol car easy on the pockets for a service man like me with a daily run of around 64kms.

[longhorn]

Looks like someone missed his dose of weed this time around while calculating fuel prices. This is the first time after the so called diesel price deregulation that there in some sanity in pricing with respect to petrol vs diesel prices. It also shows how much they were looting petrol buyers thus far and I am not even factoring the excise duty hikes.

In fact this is where petrol price should have been a long while ago. Maybe they were cross subsiding diesel with petrol till they realized this is not going to work out. Its high time these bozos decide what the hell they want to do and stop dilly dallying on policy matters. I mean everytime they leave both manufacturers and the common man confused on whether they want to promote or restrict diesel.

[drsingh]

Originally Posted by romeomidhun

Glad that the difference between Petrol and Diesel is coming down to Rs 10/-

But think about the dilemma of the manufacturers! Whether to concentrate on Petrol or Diesel models, whether to concentrate on the latest trend of SUVs or stick to small cars, whether to go for hybrid models or not...

Good for manufacturers concentrating on small Petrol cars like Maruti and Hyundai.

Not really. The manufacturers probably have a good idea where the policy is headed. There's a worldwide shift away from diesel. That's why Renault persists with the k9k diesel for the Micra to the Fluence. 1.3 mjd is our national engine. 1.5 dtec for Honda. 1.4 d for Toyota.

There's more action in petrol these days with 3 cylinder engines, turbo petrols, Mahindra /Tata moving into petrol.

But we as a country are dependent on diesel for out Transportation, Agriculture, Railways, Power backups in a big way.

These sectors are regulated with government mandated MSP food prices, excise, tolls, old diesel technology yet to be upgraded, regulated power tarrifs, inefficiencies in transmission of power, vested interests lobbying etc.

Unless the government can enforce something like Aadhar to restrict diesel subsidy (highly improbable), Diesel 'subsidy' is here to stay for the next decade to power our growth. I suspect when crude prices trend upwards, petrol prices will go up disproportionately more than the diesel prices.

Petrol engine technology is also suited for easier conversion to CNG which is a Green alternative and will see a increasing penetration in the market due to policy shifts in Public transport.

[narayan]

I am wondering if this will result in pricing parity or atleast narrowing the gap between the price of a petrol/diesel car because most of the price difference was due to the cheaper fuel cost and the auto maker's strategy to take away some of that difference upfront in the cost of the vehicle.