When India's most selling car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki thinks green, you can imagine a quantum shift in the automobile industry and a blessing to the environment. Though its a long term plan where the company expects to have its range of CNG hybrids an electric vehicles on road in the next three to five years, its a move many would be waiting for.

Shinzo Nakanishi, MD, Maruti Suzuki, spoke about the possibility of launching electric cars in the future, “We are developing electric car technology for India. But it might take us up to the next five years or more to manufacture and sell electric cars in the domestic market.”

Suzuki is already made progress with some R& D initiatives in alternative fuels. The Japanese company has developed a fuel cell technology in partnership with USA based General Motors. Suzuki is currently testing the Hybrid SX4 in Japan.

The engine is fed with a mixture of fueld cells and hig pressured hydrogen although Shinzo din't mention if it was going to be released in India. Suzuki had earlier tested the a hybrid Wagon R for the Japanese market, we do hope to see these soon in India

R C Bhargava, Chairman, Maruti Suzuki, spoke about how people in India prefer to run on CNG as its a cheaper option and this is pushing the company to work on multi-fuel variants. Though he states to fit a CNG kit currently costs over Rs 40,000 and it will only become feasible when there is a pan-India CNG filling system from companies like Reliance. They expect these cars to be launched by 2010 or 2011.