Selling BS III vehicles should not be allowed after April 1: Daimler India

The company believes that the industry's interests can go together with those of society at large

Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) on Monday said Bharat Stage III (BS-III) vehicles should not be allowed to sell in the country after April 1, the deadline set to switch to BS4 norms, as it is already scaling down such vehicles.

"In the current environment, OEMs ramping up BS III vehicles aggressively before March 31 could create an imbalance to OEMs like BharatBenz that are ramping down BS III vehicles," DICV Managing Director and CEO Erich Nesselhauf said in a statement.

Selling 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 society has to absorb, he added.

"In general, it should not be allowed that some OEMs gain additional margins, delaying the implementation of the urgently needed new BS4 environmental standards," Nesselhauf said.

The company believes that the industry's interests can and must go together with those of society at large, he added.

BS4 will bring the much-needed improvements in terms of air quality to the benefit of the people and the environment, Nesselhauf felt.

The Supreme Court is seized of the matter where automobile manufacturers are seeking permission for disposing of around 8.2 lakh BS III vehicles in stock.

It has indicated that either it will ban registration of such vehicles or impose costs to compensate for the health hazards created by pollution.

DICV said it has over the past few months not only aggressively phased out its BS III production and stocks, but have also begun production of BS4 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 early April - featuring our BS4 solution based on Daimler SCR technology," Nesselhauf said.

DICV's entire BharatBenz product range of trucks above 9 tonnes to 49 tonnes has been available as BS4 variants since August 2015.

The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) had submitted data on manufacturing and sale of BS III vehicles on a monthly basis from January 2016 and told the court that the companies were holding stock of around 8.24 lakh such vehicles, including 96,000 commercial vehicles, over 6 lakh two-wheelers and around 40,000 three-wheelers.

The manufacturers told the court that they were allowed to sell their stocks with old emission norms on previous two occasions when the industry had switched to BS2 and BS III in 2005 and 2010.