Start making flex-fuel vehicles in six months, Nitin Gadkari advises manufacturers

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.

In a series of tweets, he said that in line with Prime Minister's vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat and the government's policy on promoting ethanol as a transport fuel, 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.

The government is enabling the use of various alternate fuels in an effort to shift from fossil fuels. 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.

(ANI)