NEW DELHI: Most customers of the newly launched Maruti Celerio hatchback are opting for the expensive automatic variant, surprising the company and signalling a significant demand for automatic cars — know for effortless drive and faster acceleration.According to some Maruti Suzuki insiders, more than 52% of around 20,000 Celerio cars delivered and booked so far in the country have been the automatic variant. This is almost double the share the company had initially expected. “We will have to fine tune our supply chain and production targets to meet this spiralling demand for automatic,” Mayank Pareek, chief operating office for marketing and sales at Maruti Suzuki, told ET.The automatic Celerio comes at a starting price of Rs 4.14 lakh after the excise reduction on February 17, while the manual-geared version is priced Rs 3.76 lakh onwards. Launched at the 2014 Delhi Auto Expo , Maruti Celerio is the first car to be offered with automatic manual transmission or, AMT, in the country. This improved technology has allowed Maruti to cut down the price difference with manual cars by more than half toRs 37,843, and retain fuel efficiency at par with the manual version at 23 kmpl.While carmakers, including Maruti, have launched automaticgear variants in the market earlier as well, they were mostly priced more than Rs 1 lakh higher than manual-gear variants, and failed to make much impact.Analysts tracking the industry said the demand for automatic Celerio marks the beginning of a new era of automatics with some other carmakers including Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra planning to launch similar AMT technology in their vehicles.“The shift towards automatic is signally a rapid acceptance of the convenience driving technology. It is a sign of maturing Indian customers and shows that now the automatics transmissions now are here to stay,” said Pradeep Saxena, executive director at market consultancy firm TNS Automotive Maruti’s Pareek said, “Indians are now exposed to global markets and once they switch to convenient driving, they prefer same in India.”Maruti Suzuki pioneered the concept of automatic transmission in the country way back in 1987 when it launched an automatic M800 . It offered customised automatic Zen hatchback in 1996.More recently, it launched automatic version of the Dzire sedan, but a price difference of aroundRs 1.75 lakh over manual version ensured poor demand. The automatic-manual price gap was a bit too high even for hatchbacks.According to company insiders, a majority of customers for automatic Celerio are from metro cities where the stop-and-go congesting traffic demands constant gearshifts. They say most Celerio customers in Kerala have preferred the cheaper manual transmission.Automatic cars come with two pedals (brake and accelerator only) and a single shift gear lever, reducing driving effort by almost 60% over manual cars.