new delhi the indian car buyer does not want to buy dieselpowered vehicles anymore the share of diesel variants in sale of small cars and sedans has fallen to just 18 during apriljuly 2020 period the lowest in recent history as top manufacturers such as maruti suzuki have exited the segment due to the evernarrowing gap between petrol and diesel pricesin any case the higher price of diesel vehicles costing at least rs 1 lakh more has been a deterrent the introduction of bs6 engines from april has also pushed up the price of diesel vehicles driving away maruti suzuki and volkswagen from the marketsuch has been the fall from grace for diesel cars that cng whose availability is limited to a few states currently has a 14 share of the cars and sedans market diesels decline isnt limited to cars in the suv category the share of diesel variants has fallen to 42 in apriljuly 2020 according to numbers sourced from market research firm jato analyticsin 201112 diesel ruled suv segmentthe fall for diesel has been steep if one compares it to highs it once enjoyed around 201112 nearly 98 of suvs and utility vehicles sold in india were fired by diesel with petrol virtually out of the market in the car market diesel had a 47 share of the pie in 201213 even touching 50 share in some months while petrol was 53 as per numbers provided by industry body siamthe reasons for the fall in the share of diesels have been building up over the years among the primary ones are the narrowing gap between the fuel price of petrol and diesel in may 2012 when the share of diesel was perhaps at its peak the price gap between petrol and diesel fuels was nearly rs 33 a litre in delhi making it highly attractive for buyers to pay a premium for a diesel vehicles which were more fuelefficient now the gap is a mere rs 7 a litre in fact for a brief period around the early part of july this year diesel was a tad expensive than petrol due to the high level of vat in delhiapart from this the rollout of bs6 which required companies to make heavy investments in upgrading engines to cleaner and stricter emission norms saw many of them withdraw from the category taking away largeselling models from the categorypollution across indian cities forced the hand of regulators and led to indian car companies being forced to leapfrog early into bs6 from bs4 the cost of upgrade for managing nox nitrogen oxide and particulate matter targets for diesel models was high and post evaluation many companies decided to drop the upgradation of diesel models ravi bhatia president of jato india saidimportantly as per jato there are 97 petrolonly models in india today compared to 15 dieselonly models models which have both petrol and diesel are 45another key reason for the diesel withdrawal is the lower