Government issues advisory to Automakers to begin manufacturing Flex Fuel Vehicles in 6 months

Union Government has advised the Automobile Manufacturers in India 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 six months.

The automobile manufacturers have been advised to do so to substitute India's import of petroleum as a fuel and to provide direct benefits to farmers.

In a series of tweets, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari today said, "In order to substitute India's import of petroleum as a fuel and to provide direct benefits to our farmers, we have now advised the Automobile Manufacturers in India to start manufacturing Flex Fuel Vehicles (FFV) and Flex Fuel Strong Hybrid Electric Vehicles (FFV-SHEV)."

The suggestion has been made in line with the Prime Minister's vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat and the government's policy on promoting ethanol as a transport fuel. He said, flex-fuel vehicles are capable to run on a combination of 100 per cent Petrol or 100 per cent bio-ethanol and their blends, along with strong Hybrid Electric technology in the case of FFV-SHEVs.

Mr. Gadkari said, this move will drastically reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions from vehicles. He said, this will help India to comply with its commitment made at COP-26 to reduce the total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes by 2030.

The government is enabling the use of various alternate fuels to shift from fossil fuels. In order to accelerate the introduction of Flex Fuel vehicles, the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme has included automobile & 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 road map for Ethanol blending for the period, 2020-2025.