Auto Industry Committed To Embrace BS VI: SIAM

The challenge to meet BS VI emission norms by the year 2020 might be a little stiff but the industry is intent on achieving the set target, informed Society of India Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) president, Vinod Dasari on Monday. “The target is very stiff but the auto industry has accepted the challenge in view of the rising concerns on vehicular pollution, especially in the urban metros,” he said in a press release.

Dasari pointed out that India has been the fastest in adopting new safety and emission norms but it could bear some repercussions too. “This would not only entail a significant telescoping of long term investments into a much shorter timeframe of 3-4 years, but also deployment of a much larger technical resource drawn from world over to enable compression in the time taken for technical development, testing and validation of the vehicles in Indian conditions,” he said.

SIAM also hopes that the oil sector plays its part in the transition by making the required fuel available on a country-wide basis as per the new timeline and has testing fuel available a year sooner. The 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, Dasari expressed.

READ: New emission norms in India

For two-wheelers, the emission norms in the country have not yet been finalised. But they are expected to be even ahead of Europe, once they are put in place. Dasari also stated that the immediately next target for the industry would be to implement BS IV across the country by April 1, next year, given the fuel availability.