Tag: renault

Renault India launched the Pulse entry-level hatchback car just a year back during the 11th Auto Expo. This is based on the Nissan Micra – same engine and chassis with just minor differences in the front and rear exteriors. The Pulse is available in six colours and is available in both petrol and diesel variants. We will be looking only at the Petrol variant in this review though.

Let’s take a look at the specifications. Like a lot of entry level cars, the Pulse too comes with a 1198cc engine that comes with 3 cylinders and 12 valves. This engine is capable of extracting close to 76PS max power at 6000 RPM that translates to 104 Nm max torque at 4000 RPM. This is not much if you compare the performance of this car with other models at the entry-level – Maruti Suzuki Swift as well as Ritz deliver 87PS power while the Honda Brio delivers 88PS. Of course the Pulse beats Nano’s 38PS power but I don’t it makes sense comparing Pulse with the Nano.

Speaking of the dimensions, the Pulse measures 3.805m X 1.665m X 1.530m with a wheelbase of 2450mm. The boot space is decent at 251 liters. You can fill close to 41 liters fuel at full tank. The Renault Pulse RxE is priced at Rs 4,32,300 ex-Delhi.

Manufacturer Claim On Fuel Efficiency

Renault has been advertising its 23.1 kmpl mileage quite aggressively. However do note that this figure is for the Diesel variant only. If you are looking at the Petrol version, the officially claimed FE is 18.1 kmpl. Again, this is under standard test conditions which are basically favourable road conditions that you do not get in city traffic. So your real world mileage could be quite lower. Again, to compare this figure with the official figure from the other cars from the 1200cc segment we have reviewed already, the Pulse seems to be on par with the Swift and Ritz while Brio still wins with an FE of around 19.4 kmpl.

Test Drive & Customer Reviews

CarKhabri in their review note that the Pulse can reach a speed of 100kmph from nought in just over 14.2 seconds. The car also seems to offer 14.2 kmpl fuel economy on city road conditions with the corresponding figure for highways hovering around 18.2 kmpl.

On AutoInfoz.com, there is no detailed review of the car which makes me curious about the source of their claimed city mileage for the Pulse. Anyway, according to them, you can expect around 18kmpl on the highway roads which comes down to around 14 kmpl in the city.

CarandMe.com has a similar story – there is no detailed review of the car. However, they do note the city mileage to be around 14 kmpl with highways tending to offer around 16 kmpl. I absolutely cannot vouch for whether this info has been provided from an in-house review or sourced from elsewhere.

Carzy again does not have a review of the petrol variant of the car. However in their listings page, they note that the petrol variant of Renault Pulse should be able to deliver around 14.3 kmpl of fuel economy on city road conditions while the same on highways could go up as much as 18 kmpl. Again, it is not clear if these numbers were derived from test drives or from third party sources. MouthShut, my favourite for user reviews has no reviews from customers owning a petrol Pulse.

Overall, I guess this review should not have helped you much. Most sources reviewing the car have done it for the 1500cc diesel variant and not the petrol variant. Also, those who have done have not made it clear if the city mileage numbers provided are from any manufacturer affiliated source of if it was derived from independent testing. In any case, the numbers I have been able to gather are detailed below. If you own a Pulse Petrol, do let us know the mileage you have been able to get in the comments below. It should help our other readers a lot.

The Scala is a new sedan from Renault built exclusively for the Indian market. The car shares its name with another variant built by the same company that is available in a number of other countries like Mexico, Egypt and Colombia. Anyway, coming back to the variant available in India, the Scala is built with a 1498cc 4-cylinder engine that delivers a max power of 99.1 PS and a torque maxing out at 134Nm at 4000RPM.

The car has a standard 5 speed manual transmission gear box with power steering offering close to 5.3 meters of turning radius. The fuel tank has a capacity of around 41 liters. Renault has priced the Scala at a price of Rs. 7.07 lakhs (ex-Delhi). The car is assembled at the Chennai plant and so if you are getting it from here, you could get it a little cheaper.

Manufacturer Claim on FE

Renault promises a pretty good mileage of 16.95 kmpl on the Scala on standard road conditions. According to the company, this should translate to around 13.5 kmpl on the city road conditions where you may be braking and shifting gears more often. Truth be told, this should be a pretty good figure for a 1500cc considering that even a lower spec’d Honda Brio returns only around 13 kmpl on city roads.

Customer Feedback

Carzy in its report points out that the Diesel variant of the Scala delivers close to 4 more kilometers for every liter of petrol compared to the Petrol variant. According to the website, the RxE and RxL Petrol variants deliver around 14.3 kmpl on city roads. The corresponding figure for the Diesel variant is around 18.4 kmpl on city roads.

CarandMe calls the design of the car “grappling and elegant” which is augmented by “luxurious finishing”. According to the website, the mileage delivered by the car is “appreciable” too what with around 12.7kmpl on city roads and 17kmpl on the highways. The corresponding figure for the Diesel variant has been stated to be around 17.7 kmpl for city and 22kmpl for highway conditions.

You may have known that the Renault Scala is just a modified version of the Nissan Sunny. MaxAbout in its review notes that while the Scala could have been the later entrant to the Indian market, it still is “bigger and better” than the Nissan cousin. The website goes on to call the Scala’s exteriors “very sophisticated and stylish”. On the fuel economy front, MaxAbout reports 12 kmpl on city roads and 18 kmpl on highways for the Petrol variant.

This is all I have got at the moment. There doesn’t seem to be many actual test drives and reviews of the car from a fuel economy perspective. Here is a tabulated list of all sources we have discussed so far.