Following the Supreme Court’s recent announcement that April 1, 2020 will be the cut-off date for registration of BS IV vehicles across India, the country's leading carmaker Maruti Suzuki India says that the transition to BS VI emission norms will require proper production planning well in advance to flush out the pipeline of the existing technology.

As the country progresses towards adopting a complete generational change of emission norms governing its vehicular emissions by moving over to BS VI norms by April 1, 2020, the industry, both OEMs and suppliers are actively working towards meeting the deadline.

With the Supreme Court clearly ruling making April 1 as the date for compulsory registration of only BS VI vehicles, Maruti Suzuki India has announced plans to start production of BS VI-compliant cars once its plant resumes production after the yearly maintenance closure in the last week of December 2019. 

Speaking to a media gathering in New Delhi today, RC Bhargava, chairman, Maruti Suzuki India, said, “Production of our BS IV vehicles will largely culminate by end of December 2019. These will be models which will by and large get converted to BS VI by December 2019. As a result, we will only manufacture BS VI cars from January 2020, but will produce BS IV only if there is a strong demand for any particular model, but that number will be very less.”

“There will be just one model which we will not be able to be convert to BS VI by December 2019, and it will be spilled over to the next calendar, but we are trying to expedite that as well,” Bhargava added.

Expensive BS VI diesel and onset of strong-hybrids

Bhargava said that there is no problem in a BS VI petrol vehicle running on BS IV fuel, but the same is not possible in case of a diesel. He explained that in case of Maruti Suzuki, a BS VI diesel is roughly going to command a premium of Rs 250,000 over its BS VI petrol counterpart, and the onus would completely lie on the end customer to decide which engine option he wants to buy.

“Also by that time, we will start equipping the BS VI petrol cars with strong-hybrid systems by leveraging our Suzuki-Toyota agreement, which will serve to improve the fuel efficiency performance of a vehicle by up to 30 percent, and will help us meet our CAFE targets,” Bhargava said.