The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) has released a draft policy on Friday that proposes to improve fuel mileage for passenger cars.
Cars will have to be labelled for their fuel efficiency and these government certifications will help consumers decide their future purchases.
But experts believe the new standards are much lower than what the car industry has already achieved without certifications.
The proposed standards are asking the car industry to meet a target of 0.8 per cent improvement between 2010 and 2015 and 2.2 per cent between 2015 and 2010.
Centre for Science and Environment executive director-research Anumita Roychowdhury pointed out, “The Indian car industry has already achieved fuel consumption levels of 2.8 per cent improvement per year between 2007-10, that is the average fuel economy achieved was from 6.53 litre per 100 km to 6 litre per 100 km in 2010. So why has the government agreed to maintain status quo?” she asked.
CSE’s apprehension is that while some car majors will not have to do anything for the next five years, others will have to achieve approximately only one per cent fuel mileage improvement during the next decade.
The alarming aspect of this consultation paper is that these proposed standards will barely allow for any fuel savings. The BEE paper itself has stated that, “car fuel consumption is expected to increase from nine million metric tonne in 2010 to 25 million metric tonne in 2010.”
Fuel savings for this period will be only three million metric tones by 2010 whereas if the car industry had been asked to achieve a minimum improvement in fuel mileage of two per cent a year, the fuel consumption would have halved by 2020.
Ajay Mathur, director general of BEE, admitted that the CSE had made a strong critique against their proposals which he claimed the BEE was planning to “examine carefully”.
What is surprising is that India had started with a much better fuel economy baseline than most other vehicle producing countries but by the end of 2010, would end up worse than China and the US.