Start making Flex-Fuel Vehicles within six months: Nitin Gadkari to automakers in India

The minister said this move will drastically reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions from vehicles, helping India reduce the total carbon emissions by One Billion Tonnes as commited at COP26.

India is fast moving towards adopting alternate fuels as a source of energy for automobiles in India, which are said to be the largest contributer of pollution in India. The Indian govt has been working towards making such alternate fuel sources more accessible to commoners. While electric vehicles are one source of energy to automobiles and various subsidies are being offered in line with FAME II policy along with state subsidies, govt is also focusing on Flex-Fuel Vehicles.

Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari has said that to substitute import of petroleum as fuel and provide direct benefits to farmers, the automobile manufacturers in India have now been advised to start manufacturing Flex-Fuel Vehicles (FFV) and Flex-Fuel Strong Hybrid Electric Vehicles (FFV-SHEV) complying with BS-6 norms in a time-bound manner within a period of six months.

Flex Fuel Vehicles are capable on running on a combination of 100 per cent petrol or 100 per cent bio-ethanol and their blends, along with strong Hybrid Electric technology in case of FFV-SHEVs. The minister said this move will drastically reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions from vehicles on a well-to-wheel basis, helping India to comply with its commitment made at COP26 to reduce the total projected carbon emissions by One Billion Tonnes by 2030. 

In order to accelerate the introduction of Flex Fuel vehicles, the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme has included automobile and auto components and auto components of flex-fuel engines. NITI Aayog, after acknowledging the strong foundation for the ethanol blending programme (EBP), has formulated the roadmap for ethanol blending for the period, 2020-2025.

According to an official release, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has stipulated that in addition to conventional fuel, the authorised entities are required to install a facility for marketing at least one new generation alternate fuel - Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), bio-fuels, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), electric vehicle charging points etc - complying with various statutory guidelines and immediate steps need to be taken to introduce flex-fuel engine vehicles.

It is expected that higher percentages of ethanol will be blended in gasoline in the next five years requiring the availability of flex engine vehicles.

With inputs from ANI

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