Suzuki’s 48V hybrid for the Swift and S-Cross: How it works [Video]

India’s largest car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki last year had made a major announcement that they would be completely dumping their diesel engines and would be concentrating more on petrol and CNG powered vehicles. They are also working on a bunch electric vehicles that will soon make its way to to the market. They recently updated the Vitara Brezza and it is now available with a BS6 compliant petrol engine. The automatic version gets an additional feature of Smart Hybrid system or SHVS which helps increase the fuel efficiency of the Brezza automatic in comparison to the manual. Suzuki is now working on a more powerful version of the same system that we might be seeing on Swift and S-Cross in the future.

Before talking about the new system lets have a quick look at the Smart Hybrid system in the current models. The system currently available in Maruti cars is a 12V system which is way less powerful than the upcoming one. It is the same system that is currently available in cars like Maruti Ciaz, Ertiga, Baleno, XL6 and Brezza. The upcoming Mild Hybrid or Smart Hybrid system is a 48V SHVS system. The benefits of this system more or less remain the same as that of the existing 12V one but, as this is more powerful than the existing version it will provide more push to the engine and also make it more efficient.
The upcoming 48V SHVS system has the 48V lithium-ion battery pack which gets charged through regenerative braking and there is an ISG or Integrated Starter Generator that helps generate the energy to recharge the batteries which go therough a converter in between. The same generator provides assistance to the engine at the time of acceleration. This results in quick response, smooth acceleration and great fuel economy.


This system eliminates the drag that would normally be their on a petrol car provides enough torque at lower RPMs. This helps increasing the response time and increases the power by a bit that too without compromising on the fuel efficiency part. The existing 12V system works seamlessly and the international version would be getting the 48V stystem soon. We might also be seeing this in the S-Cross and Swift in future. Maruti Suzuki has already imported a Swift Sport, a car that runs the 48V hybrid system. In the next couple of years, expect to see a slew of Maruti Suzuki cars with the 48V hybrid system.