Auto Manufacturers agree on implementing BS-VI by 2020

In a major win for the government, major automobile manufacturers on Thursday assured the government that they will produce BS-VI fuel compliant vehicles of new models from April 2020.

More than two dozen CEOs from the industry including name like Rajiv Bajaj, Pawan Goenka, Vikram Kirloskar, Pawan Munjal attended a meeting called on by the road transport minister Mr Nitin Gadkari with regards to the implementation of the BS VI fuel complaint vehicles by 2020.

However, they demanded that the government unveil a scrapping policy to phase out old vehicles and ensure that there are no policy flip-flops in shifting the clean fuel timeline due to pressure from any quarter. They also requested for more time to produce existing models which will be compliant to BS-VI emission norms and also to ensure that the fuel is made available across the country.

While automobile manufacturers submitted that vehicular pollution is a small contributor to air pollution, sources said Gadkari said that there is huge public demand for cleaner air and for “every bit of pollution counts” irrespective of its source.

Accepting the target set by government as a “challenging” one, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) president Vinod Dasari said, “We explained to the minister that world over shifting from BS-IV to BS-V takes about five years. Shifting from BS-V to BS-VI takes six years. There is no country ever which has bypass BS-V directly.

It takes 10-12 years to go directly from BS-IV to BS-V”.

“We had suggested that we will do it in seven may be even in six years (2023). But he asked us to bring BS-VI by 2020.

We will work out the way to bring new models by that time.”

Source – ETAuto