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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Jairam ‘criminal’ tag on fuel-guzzlers

Jairam ‘criminal’ tag on fuel-guzzlers

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published Published on Nov 13, 2010   modified Modified on Nov 13, 2010

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh today said the use of sports utility vehicles and BMWs in India was “criminal” and called for changes in diesel pricing to discourage people from riding fuel-guzzlers.

He said India’s SUV market was growing on subsidised diesel, the owners benefiting from the subsidies intended mainly to help farmers.

“The growth of large-size vehicles like SUVs is a growth of concern.... The use of vehicles such as SUVs and BMWs in countries like India is criminal,” Ramesh told a UN conference on low carbon transport options. The more fuel a vehicle guzzles, the higher its emissions.

Ramesh spoke of a need to “put a penalty on the type of cars that you don’t want to see on the roads such as a diesel-driven car or SUV. We cannot ask people to buy or not to buy a particular car, but through an effective fiscal policy, we can have an impact.”

As minister, Ramesh now uses an Ambassador (11.1km per litre) but earlier owned a Maruti Zen, which offers lower fuel economy.

People who have used SUVs say they offer “higher levels of safety, higher ground clearance, and better driving”.

BMW dealers in Calcutta declined comment but Rajan Vaswani, CEO of an engineering firm in Calcutta and a BMW sedan owner, said: “Is he (Ramesh) talking of SUVs or BMWs? If he is talking of only BMWs, then it’s criminal of him to single out one company.”

He added: “SUVs are manufactured by Mercedes, Audi, Honda, Toyota... they are of the same dimensions, the same engine size. If he is talking of SUVs polluting, the BMW SUVs are CBUS, directly imported from Germany, which meet the rigorous emission standards of Germany.”

BMW sedan owner Kaushik Nath, of the KKN Group of Companies, said: “Why is he singling out BMWs? BMW SUV engines are much less polluting than the others.”

However, vehicle emission analysts have been concerned at people buying larger cars in a country that has no mandatory standards yet for fuel economy of vehicles. Without mandatory standards, there is no real pressure on manufacturers to improve fuel economy, said Anumita Roychoudhuri, associate director of the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi.

Industry figures, she said, suggest India’s average fuel economy has not changed in recent years. Going by these figures, the average vehicle emission translates into about 155gm CO2 per km — higher than Europe’s target of 140gm per km though Europe has a higher proportion of large cars.

“We do have higher taxes on large cars but we need... taxes (to be) linked to the fuel economy,” Roychoudhuri said. The transport sector is estimated to contribute about 7.5 per cent of India’s greenhouse gas emissions. The figure is expected to reach 15 per cent in the next 15-20 years.


The Telegraph, 13 November, 2010, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101113/jsp/nation/story_13171967.jsp


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