All three of Honda Amaze’s rivals – Maruti Suzuki Dzire, Tata Tiago and Hyundai Aura – offer at least one factory fitted CNG variant
In Indian automotive market, Honda Cars India Ltd has never launched a CNG-equipped vehicle in the recent past even though most of its rivals have. But Honda has kind of launched a CNG option with all of their vehicles. In a rather strange move, select Honda dealerships have been offering CNG kits right from the dealership and without any warranty issues.
Amaze CNG, City CNG and Elevate CNG
With rising fuel prices, many buyers have been gravitating towards alternate fuels. In this regard, CNG emerges as a viable option over an EV, owing to its significantly lower upfront cost and faster re-fuel times. Honda is taking a different approach with CNG powertrains, but is offering CNG option to buyers.
Unlike its immediate mainstream rivals, Honda is offering an aftermarket CNG kit ‘officially’. This means that this CNG kit is not factory-fitted and is offered at dealer level. However, this is not completely ‘jugaad’ with CNG filler under the bonnet or something like that. CNG filler is below the fuel filler and looks like it is factory-fitted.
Honda has not revealed an official statement regarding the same. As seen in Anubhav Chauhan’s detailed walkaround video from the dealership below, we can see a Honda Amaze manual variant equipped with a CNG kit sourced from Lovato.
As per Anubhav, Honda is offering 1 year warranty for this kit and it costs Rs. 78,000 to install. Car’s three-year standard will remain intact. Interestingly, he further mentioned Honda is installing this kit on City and Elevate as well. This kit can be installed on both manual and automatic variants.
He further mentioned that Honda dealerships will retrofit this CNG kit from Lovato even on existing Honda cars (Amaze, City and Elevate). Amaze gets a 60L CNG tank along with a CNG level indicator in the centre console beside USB ports.
Reduction in boot space
When the 60L CNG cylinder is installed, the boot space is slightly compromised. In Amaze, the car’s fuel efficiency was quite good to begin with, as seen with our long-term review vehicle. With this new CNG kit, we should expect a lot more fuel efficiency than before. It would have been great if only Honda had put a number on it.
The Amaze demonstrated in this video, comes equipped with a 1.2L 4-cylinder NA petrol engine that is capable of generating 89 bhp and 110 Nm of peak torque, mated to a 5-speed gearbox. Honda is developing the 3rd generation Amaze sedan and may feature a factory fitted CNG kit at launch.
