Mahindra will launch its first BS-VI petrol vehicle as early as the beginning of the second half of this financial year as these vehicles can run on BS-IV compliant fuel.
Mahindra & Mahindra, India’s leading utility vehicles maker, said that it would transition to the stringent BS-VI emission norms ahead of schedule, and save at least 20 per cent on the estimated cost increase of vehicles due to high localisation content.
A rough time for sourcing
Mahindra will be upgrading eight diesel and four petrol engines driving more than 50 products, a transition that called for an investment of more than Rs 1,000 crore. Pawan Goenka, managing director of Mahindra and Mahindra informed Economic Times that the past three-and-a-half years have perhaps been the most challenging for any product development and sourcing organisation in the auto industry in India.
He further said that Mahindra will launch its first BS-VI petrol vehicle as early as the beginning of the second half of this financial year as these vehicles can run on BS-IV compliant fuel. The BS-VI diesel vehicles will only be launched when BS-VI compliant diesel fuel becomes available, Goenka said.
The Centre had said in 2016 that the Indian auto industry would skip BS-V emission norms and leapfrog to BS-VI standards from April 2020 to combat rising air pollution.
