Comments
Amidst growing concern among automakers about the high inventory levels ahead of April 1 deadline of phasing out non-BS-IV vehicles, Toyota Kirloskar Motor has said that it has stopped manufacturing them a year ago.
Toyota Kirloskar was one of the worst hit because of a ban on diesel vehicles above 2000 cc in the Delhi-NCR region in December 2015. But the Supreme Court lifted the ban in August 2016 though it imposed a green cess of one per cent on the ex-showroom price of the vehicles.
“Toyota Kirloskar Motors Pvt Ltd had stopped the manufacture of BS 3 vehicles more than a year ago as we believe in providing state of the art technology in our vehicles in the country’s fight against pollution,” Toyota Kirloskar Motor co-partner and Vice-Chairman, Vikram Kirloskar told BusinessLine .
Kirloskar said all their vehicles currently being sold are BS 4 compliant. Further in line with the government plans, Toyota Kirloskar will introduce BS 6 fuel compliant vehicles as soon as such fuel is available in the country. “Our commitment to being environment-friendly both in our products and in our processes has stood the test of time,” he added. Last week, SIAM (Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers) claimed that its members had an inventory of non-BS-IV vehicles of about 7.5 lakh two-wheelers, 45,000 three-wheelers, 20,000 passenger vehicles and 75,000 commercial vehicles. The SIAM spokespersons said that a large inventory was because of the effect of demonetisation which had considerably slowed down the sale of vehicles. Therefore, it was extremely difficult to meet the April 1 deadline for phasing out non-BS-IV vehicles. However, EPCA (Environment Pollution Control Authority) has insisted that no non-BS-IV vehicles should be allowed to be registered from April 1, 2017.
The vehicle manufacturers will be forced to sell all their inventory in the next two months to adhere to the April 1 deadline.
Sources in the Oil Ministry had said earlier that BS-IV fuel will be available across most parts of the country by April 1. This measure is expected to further reduce the emissions of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbon, oxides of nitrogen and Sulphur which are found less in BS-IV compliant fuel.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.