Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza Facelift Manual to go Hybrid

Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza facelift was launched in India last month. Defying the general Maruti Suzuki’s definition of facelift, this one came with major mechanical change. Upcoming emission norms forced company to ditch the oil burner in exchange of 1.5 liter K15B petrol motor. Compact SUV with petrol mill equates to lower fuel economy figures, which might not go well with ‘Kitna Deti Hai?’ fans. To address that concern to certain extent, company did equip it with mild hybrid technology, but only in automatic variants. Now, as per the leaked report the same technology will be ported to manual variants too.

The Brezza Facelift

Last month this compact SUV came with an updated face and some additional features on the list. After the heart transplant, it was expected that the petrol powered Brezza would cost considerably less. But contradicting the expectations, it came at almost the same price of outgoing oil burner powered car. This sticker shock was avoided slightly by a not equipping the manual variant with SHVS. Now according to leaked document, manual variants with mild hybrid technology are in pipeline. It will come in all four variants LXi, VXi, ZXi and ZXi+. The manual variant without SHVS is claimed to deliver 17.03 KMPL, so expect the hybrid variant to deliver a figure of around 18.5 KMPL. The K15B petrol mill produces around 105 bhp and max torque of around 138 Nm. It is mated to 5 speed manual transmission and 4 speed torque converter autobox.

Why Manual Hybrid Now?

Company’s announcement of going petrol only, in BS VI era, turned into reality with this Brezza facelift. While going petrol-only, they brought in much awaited automatic transmission as well. Petrol engine with automatic transmission on this SUV meant lower efficiency figures. To make up for that, MSIL paired the setup with their mild hybrid technology called – SHVS. Though this is not the full-fledged hybrid system, it still helps in increasing fuel efficiency by smaller margin. The system consists of idle start stop system, brake energy regeneration and a motor enabled torque assist feature. One of the costliest components of it is Lithium ion battery. So, to keep lower entry level price tag, company might have avoided to equip manual variants of the SUV with this technology. Now after the initial acceptance period of the facelift is over, management might have given a go ahead to this upgrade. For this upgrade, the price bump could be in the range of around 40,000 INR.