Sale of BS III vehicles should not be allowed from April 1 as part of auto industry’s transition to BS IV emission norms, according to Erich Nesselhauf, Managing Director and CEO of Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV), the Indian arm of Germany’s auto major Daimler AG.
“BS III vehicles should not be allowed after April 1, or at least the sales of those vehicles should be penalised in order to set off the additional cost and environment burden the society has to absorb,” he said in a statement.
In general, some OEMs alone cannot be allowed to gain additional margins, delaying the implementation of the urgently needed new BS IV environmental standards, he added.
Nesselhauf also said that OEMs ramping up BS III vehicles aggressively before March 31 could create imbalance to OEMs like BharatBenz that are cutting down production of BS III vehicles.
“BS IV will bring much needed improvements in terms of air quality, to the benefit of the people and the environment. From an economic perspective, it should also not be overlooked that BS IV delivers fuel economy advantages compared to BS III and thus helps to reduce the nation’s dependency on oil imports,” he explained.
“Over the past few months, DICV has not only phased out BS III production and stocks but have also begun production of BS IV in full swing.”
“We are now preparing for the launch of an entirely new environment-friendly and even more fuel efficient range of BharatBenz trucks in early April - featuring our BS IV solution based on Daimler SCR technology which has been proven hundreds of thousands of times in markets across the world,” he said.