Apex industry body, the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers of India (SIAM) has cautioned that skipping BS V emission norms and moving directly to BS VI emission norms could lead to major safety compromises in vehicles.

While the BS V (the equivalent of Euro 5) and BS VI (Euro 6) fuels are basically the same, the vehicular technologies are vastly different and have to be sequentially developed, tested and validated with each stage taking 4 to 4.5 years. This, SIAM says, is also why developed markets like Europe first implemented the Euro 5 norm and moved to Euro 6 only after proper validation and stabilisation of Euro 5 technologies, while the fuel was already available.

India had enforced BS III norms across the country from October 2010, while in 13 major cities, BS IV emission norms were put in place since April 2010.  It is understood that oil marketing companies are keen to move directly from Euro 4 or BS IV through to Euro 6 or BS VI norms, mainly with a view to avoid investing twice on the technology advancement programme. The cost of investment to move one generation upwards to BS V is estimated to be around Rs 80,000 crore.
“Notwithstanding the lead time required, industry has proposed an accelerated timeline for introducing BS V to 2019 and BS VI by 2023, as against 2020 and 2024 proposed by the Expert Committee on Auto Fuel Vision & Policy,” said Vikram Kirloskar, president, SIAM.

“Vehicles have to operate as a complete system and emission technologies have a close linkage with safety as well as fuel efficiency parameters both of which are covered by other mandatory regulations of Government. So, while the environmentalists may look at emissions in isolation as standalone plug-in technologies, the auto industry and the global technology providers will never put any vehicle in the market without properly validating the safety, reliability and the regulatory conformance of the vehicle as a complete system. There is no room for shortcuts and knee-jerk reactions where safety is concerned,” Kirloskar added.

The danger of compressing the timeframes is the risk of putting an inadequately validated technology on the Indian roads, which will lead to safety issues in vehicles like unintended acceleration or fires which may arise due to improper regeneration of the particulate trap, if the process is not adequately tested and validated in Indian road conditions.

According to SIAM, moving from BS III emission norms to BS V emission norms itself reduces PM emission further by up to 90% from the BS III level. Further upgradation to BS VI only offers an incremental 0-10% advantage in PM emissions, which is definitely not worth the safety risk involved in skipping the BS V stage.

“Why should we wait for BS VI till the year 2020 when we can achieve 90% reduction in vehicular pollution with BS V stage one year earlier in 2019? SIAM’s proposal of advancing to BS V in 2019 and to BS VI in 2023 is the best solution from the environment and safety point of view,” said Kirloskar.