Indian government has started taking interest in automotive sector for a while now and comes with some unique new decisions every now and then. One such rule was the introduction of sub 4 metre segment primarily dominated by compact sedans and now government is planning to set fuel efficiency standard to 18.2 KMPL from April 2017.
Nowadays, the continuous Price hike of fuels is one of the major concerns for Indian buyers and the most favorite question of Indians ‘Kitna Deti hai’ becomes relatively important. It seems government has listen to the demand of consumer and now wants car makers to improve fuel efficiency.
As per the new standards, the car maker needs to deliver 18.2 KMPL which is 15 percent more than the existing one and the target figure could be increased to 22 KMPL by 2022. All new standards and directives would be needed for commercial vehicles like trucks and buses to meet the average figures on which government will work soon.
The new standards has been set by Bureau of energy efficiency and will require every car manufacture to offer car models that delivers equal or more than 18.2 KMPL of fuel efficiency. This doesn’t mean that every car model will have to return 18.2 KMPL of mileage; the car maker can still sell a car that delivers less than 18.2 but only when entire line-up averages more than 18.2 KMPL.
Let’s understand this with an example, if ‘A’ manufacture has two cars – C and D, C returns 17.5 KMPL of mileage while D delivers 21.1 KPML. In this case C can continue to be sold as the cumulative average comes to 19.3 KMPL which is more than the needed.
The Government has asked all the manufactures to strictly follow the guidelines related to new fuel efficiency norms by April 2017 and failing to do so could result in huge penalties or other charges which will be decided by Ministry of road transport and Highways.
After this implementation, India would make it to elite club of advanced countries such as Japan, China, USA and Germany and these new standards would benefit in terms of fuel savings in the region of Rs. 90,000 Crore a year.
Apart from that the vehicles could also norms related to safety such as mandatory crash tests for every car from October 2017 and we hope government should also bring some practical laws to make roads safe in India.
