Auto industry body SIAM today cautioned that moving directly to Bharat Stage(BS) VI emission norms, skipping BS V, could lead to major safety compromises in vehicles that could put life of consumers at risk, amid speculation that the government is planning such a move.
According to Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), 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 un-intended acceleration or fires" if the process is not adequately tested.
"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," SIAM President Vikram Kirloskar said in a statement.
According to the industry body, while the BS V and BS VI 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.
"That is also the reason why other countries have first implemented the Euro V norm and moved to Euro VI only after proper validation and stabilisation of the Euro V technologies, while the fuel was already available," it said.
Currently, 33 cities in India follow BS-IV norms on cars while the rest are on BS III. Under the national auto fuel policy, BS-IV standards are to be adopted across the country by 2017 and BS V by 2020. BS VI was to be introduced in 2024.
However, there has been speculation that the NDA government is considering advancing implementation of BS-VI fuel norms across India by skipping the BS V stage.
SIAM said 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 un-intended 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 condition, which could put the life of the consumer at risk".
It further said: "In such unfortunate incidents, the people of India will ask the question why the auto industry has introduced a technology on the Indian roads without proper validation and does this not amount to negligence by the industry. Industry would have no defence and the liabilities on the industry would be huge. This is not an acceptable situation for the industry."
Keen to avoid such a situation, Kirloskar said: "...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.
