Nitin Gadkari announcement to make cars expensive?

On Thursday (23/12/2021), Union Road Transport and Highway Minister Nitin Gadkari said that his ministry has issued an advisory to the automobile manufacturer in India to start manufacturing the flex-fuel engines vehicles in the next six months. While we know it will be better for the environment and also cheaper, would it not make cars more expensive? Let’s see what he said below.

His statement on this was, “Yesterday, I signed an advisory, urging the carmakers to manufacture flex-fuel engines. We have asked them to start this production in the next six months so that vehicles can run on more than one fuel. The new vehicles will have the option to run on 100 percent ethanol, which is produced by our farmers”.

He addressed that India currently imports petroleum products worth Rs 8 lakh crore every year. If India would continue to depend on other countries for fossil fuels, then the import bill will increase up to Rs 25 lakh crore per year in the next five years. So to reduce dependency, flex-fuel vehicles are a good alternative.

What are flex-fuel vehicles?

Flex-fuel vehicles are flexible-fuel vehicles (FFV) that can run on more than one fuel. The ICE engines operate on gasoline or any blend of gasoline or ethanol up to 83 percent. In the FFV, most of the components are the same as the ICE engines but some ethanol-compatible components are added. These components can differentiate between the chemical properties of fuel input and tune the engine via ECM as required for combustion.

Also, Nitin Gadkari said that it is an advisory and not mandatory as the three big car manufacturing companies have already agreed to manufacture them. Practically saying, it will take a year to see such cars manufactured. Now as we have seen in the past, the jump from BS4 to BS6 resulted in the prices of cars to increase. With flex fuel engines, we will need revised ECM units, fuel pumps and engine components that can work with different fuel mixtures. This will result in cars being more expensive definitely.

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