Auto Industry Accepts Challenge to Meet BS-VI Norms by 2020
Published On Sep 20, 2016
After a lot of apprehension from commercial vehicle makers, Indian auto industry is finally warming up to the BS-VI emission norms. According to a statement issued by Mr. Vinod Dasari, President of SIAM (Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers), the auto industry is committed to meet the challenge of achieving the BS-VI emission norms by 2020. Although the deadline is extremely tight, the auto industry is ready to work towards the new goals, in view of the rising concerns on vehicular pollution, especially in the urban metros.
Mr. Dasari added, “India has been the fastest at adopting new safety and emission norms. This leap frog would make India the first country in the world to accomplish such an accelerated progression in vehicular emission norms.” This would not only entail a significant telescoping of long term investments into a much shorter timeframe of 3-4 years, but also draw a larger technical resource drawn from the world over to enable compression in the time taken for technical development, testing and validation of the vehicles in Indian road conditions.
Mr Dasari also cautioned that once the industry has chosen to leapfrog the emission norms, this roadmap should not be changed or delayed midway for any reason. He hoped that the oil sector would extend its support by making the required fuel available on a countrywide basis as per the new timeline. Also, the oil industry should make testing fuel available a year earlier.
Exemptions given to oil companies in some of the fuel specifications will make it even more difficult for the auto industry to meet other mandatory norms like fuel efficiency. Again, for two wheelers, even the Euro 5 Emission Norms (equivalent to BS-VI) in Europe is not yet finalised. This is a matter of concern for the two wheeler industry, as India’s regulation on emission norms will be ahead of even Europe.
Mr. Dasari also stated that's the industry is fully committed and ready for implementing BS-IV across the country on April 1, 2017 and was now waiting for the fuel availability on a pan India basis.
