Why Maruti's hybrid cars use a Toyota engine, not a Suzuki one

The strong hybrid under the Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara's bonnet is not a Suzuki design. It is Toyota's Hybrid System, badged for a Maruti showroom. The reason traces back to a 2019 technology sharing deal that let Suzuki buy Toyota's hybrid hardware instead of building its own, and the reason it gets built in India traces to Toyota Kirloskar Motor's plant at Bidadi, on the edge of Bengaluru.

The deal that put Toyota's engine in a Maruti

Toyota and Suzuki signed their first memorandum of understanding in 2017, pairing what Toyota called its strength in electrification with Suzuki's strength in small cars. The arrangement that actually matters to Indian buyers came on March 20, 2019, when Toyota agreed to supply its Toyota Hybrid System, THS, to Suzuki worldwide, and the two companies agreed to spread hybrid technology in India through local sourcing of hybrid systems, engines and batteries, according to Toyota's own India newsroom.

That is why the Grand Vitara's Intelligent Electric Hybrid and the Toyota Urban Cruiser Hyryder's strong hybrid are mechanically the same unit. Suzuki did not reverse engineer a Toyota style hybrid. It bought the real thing and put its own badge and tuning on top.

On June 24, 2022, Toyota announced the next step: a new SUV developed by Suzuki, carrying "mild hybrid developed by Suzuki and strong hybrid developed by Toyota", would go into production at Toyota Kirloskar Motor from that August, sold by both Maruti Suzuki and TKM under their own names, with plans to export it to markets including Africa.

What Bidadi, near Bengaluru, actually builds

All of this hardware comes out of Karnataka. Toyota Kirloskar Motor's second plant at Bidadi, about 30km from Bengaluru, is where the Camry strong hybrid is built locally and where the Hyryder and Grand Vitara hybrid duo roll off the line for both brands. In 2023 TKM signed a memorandum with the Karnataka government for a third plant at the same Bidadi location, an investment of about ₹3,300 crore meant to add 1,00,000 units a year of capacity, Toyota's India press page says.

So when a Maruti Nexa dealer in any Indian city sells a Grand Vitara Intelligent Electric Hybrid, the hybrid engine and motor combination was engineered by Toyota and most likely built within sight of Bengaluru's outer ring road, not in Gujarat where most other Maruti cars come from.

What the numbers actually show

Maruti's own press materials for the Grand Vitara list two efficiency figures that make the difference visible. The mild hybrid version, running Suzuki's own K-series engine, returns up to 21.11km/l. The strong hybrid version, running Toyota's engine and motor, returns 27.97km/l, by Maruti's own published figure.

The same Toyota hybrid hardware now sits in the Innova Hycross and the Camry, both sold as Toyotas, and in the Grand Vitara and Invicto, sold as Maruti Suzukis. Suzuki pays for access to a hybrid system it did not have to develop from scratch. Toyota gets volume for a technology it already paid to develop, built at a Bengaluru area plant that Toyota itself is expanding.

Sources

• Toyota and Suzuki to Deepen Collaboration in the Fields of Development and Production in India
• Toyota and Suzuki Agree to Start Consideration toward New Collaboration
• Toyota Kirloskar Motor inks MOU with Government of Karnataka for next round of investments towards setting-up of a new plant
• Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara set to Rule Every Road