Maruti Alto K10 - Why Lower Mileage Than Celerio?

Published on 19 August 2022 at 09:00 am By Mahesh Yadav

If you’re a keen auto enthusiast, then you must have noticed that the new 2022 Maruti Suzuki Arena Alto K10 has a lower mileage figure than the Celerio. It’s worth noting that both of these cars use the same engine and transmission. Still, the Celerio manages to deliver up to 1.78kmpl better mileage than the Alto K10. We approached Maruti Suzuki’s Chief Technical Officer, CV Raman, to find out.

First, let’s look at the official specs of the 2 cars:

ALTO K10 VS CELERIO ENGINE SPECS COMPARISON
	Alto K10 13-inch	Celerio 14-inch	Celerio 15-inch
Engine	1.0L	1.0L
Cylinder	3	3
Displacement	998cc	998cc
Power	66PS @ 5500rpm	66PS @ 5500rpm
Torque	89Nm @ 3500rpm	89Nm @ 3500rpm
Manual	5-speed	5-speed
Manual FE	24.39kmpl	25.24kmpl	24.97kmpl
Automatic	5-speed AMT	5-speed AMT
Auto FE	24.9kmpl	26.0 - 26.68kmpl	26.00kmpl
Tyre Size	145/80 R13	165/70 R14	175/60 R15

As you can see, the Alto K10 petrol-manual powertrain has a 0.58kmpl-0.85kmpl lower mileage than the Celerio. With the petrol-automatic, the gap widens to 1.1kmpl-1.78kmpl.

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No Idle Start/Stop

The first and the most prominent one is the lack of idle starts/stop feature. The ARAI fuel efficiency test cycle also includes idling in traffic to partially simulate real-life driving conditions. The same 1.0L petrol engine in the S-Presso, Celerio and WagonR gets the idle start/stop feature, which improves their official as well as real-world mileage figure.

Lower Effective Gearing

The Alto K10 also uses 13-inch wheels across all variants. Meanwhile, the Celerio gets 14-inch wheels in lower variants and 15-inch alloys in the higher variants. Now, you could argue that the lower rotating mass in the 13-inch wheels should help the Alto K10 improve its mileage figure further. However, the smaller overall circumference of the tyre reduces the effective gearing of the tyres. Hence, the Alto K10’s tyres make fewer rotations with slightly higher torque at the wheels at the same RPM in the same gear than the Celerio.

The Celerio’s variants with the 14-inch tyres have a 4.5% bigger circumference than the Alto K10’s 145/80 R13 tyres. The top-variant’s 15-inch tyres have a 5.4% bigger circumference, which somewhat compensates for the higher rotating mass.

Because of this tyre size difference, the Alto K10 has an effectively lower gearing overall and more torque at the wheel. So, you can expect the Alto K10 to offer a peppier driving experience and better acceleration. This characteristic is in line with the Alto K10’s personality as enthusiasts lovingly call it the ‘pocket rocket’. However, at highway speeds, its engine will have to run at higher RPMs than the Celerio’s.

Also Read: 2022 Maruti S-Presso Facelift – What’s New?

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