With the beginning of a new month, carmakers have started posting their sales figures for the previous month, which happened to be the most celebrated month of the year owing to the festive season. With the sales numbers coming out in public, the difference between the car buyers buying petrol and diesel cars is becoming clearer, while the gap is becoming wider in some cases too.

While in recent times, people have been shifting towards petrol-powered cars more according to T-BHP sales analysis, there are some segments which are still garnering high sales of diesel-powered vehicles. People are buying petrol-powered variants of hatchbacks and sedans more, while the category of SUVs and MUVs is still very much favourable towards diesel-powered variants.

Starting with ladder-on-frame rugged SUVs and MUVs, models like Mahindra Bolero, Mahindra Alturas G4 and MG Gloster have 100 per cent of their sales coming from diesel variants, since they are diesel-only models. However, for other ladder-on-frame vehicles like Toyota Fortuner, Toyota Innova and Mahindra Scorpio-N, which are available with both petrol and diesel engine options, over 95 per cent of their sales are coming from diesel variants.

Coming to the monocoque frame-based midsize SUVs, the sales of diesel-only models like Tata Harrier, Tata Safari, Jeep Meridian and Citroen C5 Aircorss remained 100 per cent diesel-dependent. However, even for other SUVs, the demand for diesel-powered variants remained higher, some of which are Hyundai Tucson (72%), Hyundai Alcazar (73%), Mahindra XUV700 (66%) and Jeep Compass (57%). The MG Hector (36%) was an exception, though, as it is not available with the option of diesel-automatic, unlike others in this segment. Monocoque SUVs like Kia Carnival and Mahindra Marazzo, which are diesel-only models, showed 100 per cent of their sales from diesel variants.

For the smaller midsize and compact SUVs, which are available in both petrol and diesel versions, the demand for their diesel variants remained lower, such as Kia Seltos (43%), Kia Sonet (45%), Hyundai Venue (22%), Tata Nexon (16%) and Honda WR-V (11%). However, the Hyundai Creta (55%) and Mahindra XUV300 (51 %) remained exceptions here, experiencing higher demand for their diesel variants.

Among sedans, while the Honda City and Honda Amaze garnered 6 per cent of their sales from diesel variants, the Hyundai Verna saw 41 per cent of its sales coming from diesel variants. Even for the Hyundai i20 and Tata Altroz, the only two hatchbacks available with the option of diesel-powered variants, the sales from diesel variants stood at 11 per cent each.