2023 deadline for BS VI unrealistic, says Siam

The government's proposal to advance implementation of emission norm, BS VI, by three years to 2021 has been termed 'unrealistic' by sector body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam). Siam, however, welcomed the decision to advance BS V norms by three years to 2019.

Siam has proposed the Bharat Stage or BS VI norms can be advanced to 2023 by compressing the technology development time by one year. Any further advancement of BS VI norms will neither be technically possible nor advisable due to the extensive testing and validation of the technologies, it said.

It added the technology providers had expressed their inability to provide fully validated BS VI solutions for all types and models of four-wheelers before 2023. India currently follows Bharat Stage or BS IV norms in most of the cities.

The move from BS III to IV is supposed to bring down the particulate matter from cars to half (0.0250 gram/kilometre) and to one-fifth in commercial vehicles (0.02 g/km). A shift to BS V will mean further reduction from 0.0250 gram/km to 0.0045 g/km in case of cars.

But no gain is expected in case of commercial vehicles. The shift to BS VI will reduce particulate matter from commercial vehicles to half (0.01 gram/km) but keep the emission from cars unchanged.