Tanking Up On Diesel Play

Carmakers such as M&M have battled all odds to become ready for BS-VI emission norms ahead of schedule, but concerns around fuel availability, price hikes, and the demand scenario loom large.

- Aveek Datta

TWO DECADES AGO, when the world was gearing up to usher in a new millennium, a peculiaryet-grave challenge surfaced. A bug called Y2K threatened to wreak havoc by causing software and hardware failure in computerised systems due to a computer’s inability to read the date accurately as the world transitioned from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000. The fear was that a computer would have no way of knowing if the last two digits of the year were supposed to denote 2000 or 1900.

The threat eventually subsided and the world moved on with its business as usual. In 2016, carmakers thought 2020 would be the Y2K moment for the auto industry in India (especially for those associated with the popular diesel vehicles) as the government declared that all cars sold from April 1, 2020 would need to conform to BS-VI emission standards. To put things in perspective, Europe moved from Euro IV emission standards to Euro VI over a span of 10 years; here the Indian government wanted Indian carmakers to skip a step and leapfrog from BS-IV norms to BS-VI in a little over three years.

Pawan Goenka, managing director of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd (M&M), explains that the fear was that carmakers would be under pressure to make the transition in a short span of time and would resort to importing all the technology needed. This would have been at the cost of the Indian auto ancillary industry, and would have led to exorbitantly higher car prices for retail buyers. The doomsday scenario projected culminated in the industry collapsing and economic growth suffering.

But Goenka says that his company, as well as the rest of the industry, has been able to meet the challenge head-on and is prepared to meet the stringent emission norms with its products from April 1 next year.