If you live in Delhi, you may have felt your car engine running a tad more smoothly of late. The reason is that, unknown to motorists, Delhi has already switched to Bharat Stage-VI (BS-VI) fuels, ahead of the scheduled April 1 launch for the capital.
State-run fuel retailers have been pushing cleaner petrol and diesel ¡ª similar to, but not exactly the same, as EuroVI fuels ¡ª since February to flush supply pipelines and tanks at petrol pumps. Almost all the 397 petrol pumps in the capital are selling BS-VI fuels.
This makes Delhi the first city in the country to run on BS-VI fuels, two years ahead of the 2020 deadline the Centre had set for rolling out cleaner fuels across the country. The decision to jump the deadline for Delhi was taken in November when smoke from burning of crop stubble by farmers in neighbouring states choked the capital.
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The blame was also put on vehicular emissions, especially from ill-maintained commercial vehicles with old engines crowding the city.
Amid a public outcry over the capital¡¯s poor air quality, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan stepped in by ordering state-run fuel retailers to supply BS-VI fuels in Delhi from April 1, 2018 and examine introducing these fuels in NCR by April 2019.
Oil company executives claimed that BS-VI fuels will have ¡°better¡± emission than vehicles running on CNG. But auto experts said introducing BS-VI fuels without the vehicles tuned for such fuels will only yield partial benefit since these will be used by vehicles with BS-IV or BSIII engines plying on Delhi¡¯s roads.
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Currently, only Mercedes sells BS-VI cars, while the certification process is on for other auto manufacturers.
BS-IV diesel has 50 ppm (parts per million) sulphur, while BS-VI will have 10 ppm. So, using BS-VI fuel in BS-IV engines will not hurt performance but will also not give you the full benefit,¡± an engineer working with an auto company said requesting anonymity.
The Saumitra Chaudhuri report, the forebearer of fuel quality standards, had in 2014 projected an increase of 70-80 paise per litre ¡ª at costs and taxes prevailing then ¡ª in the price of cleaner fuels. Dealers told TOIthey are yet to hear from the oil companies on whether prices will rise after April 1 or not.
But with the daily fuel price revision, oil companies can stagger any upward revision required due to the quality upgrade as it can be subsumed into the routine increase because of global oil prices.
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Transport minister Nitin Gadkari had in January 2016 persuaded the government to leapfrog to BS-VI by 2020, skipping the BS-V stage throughout the country.
In November, the Society of Indian Auto Manufacturers (SIAM) had welcomed the move to advance the introduction of BS-VI fuels in Delhi, saying it was in line with international practices where the higher grade of fuel is generally introduced a couple of years before higher emission standards for vehicles kick in.
¡°Early introduction of BS-VI fuel gives confidence to the auto industry that these will be available across the country from April 1, 2020,¡± a SIAM statement had quoted its president Abhay Firodia as saying. It could be another story for automakers who may find it difficult to start supplying vehicles with BS-VI engines at such a short notice, should the government pressure them to do so.