Ban on diesel cars not going to affect auto component manufacturers

Supreme Court's move to impose ban on diesel vehicles to reduce the alarming level of pollution in the city is nowhere near affecting the auto-component manufacturing ventures.

Supreme Court recently banned the registration of high end diesel vehicles having an engine capacity over 2000cc to regulate the city’s pollution.

The auto component manufacturers said that the move will not affect them much.

“I don’t think that the policy would affect us to much extent, because the restriction would be inflicted only on 2 per cent of the entire vehicle population,” said Romy Kharbanda, owner of Kharbanda Automotives.

“This is because the ban is restricting the usage of vehicles which have an engine of over 2000cc, and relatively lesser fraction of vehicles come under the category” he added further.

Rather, many of the manufacturers are backing the policy keeping in concern the health benefits that can be derived from the reduced pollution. However, the ban, just being limited to Delhi for only a period of 3 months won’t suffice the need of pollution reducing policies.

“It is a good step on the government’s part but the ban should be extended on all the diesel vehicles in the entire country rather than being restricted to Delhi and that too only till march 2016” said Vikas Chowdhary , Managing Director, Fourplus Overseas.

“Besides, the ban rather than reducing pollution, might lead to an increased demand of vehicles, piling on to the problems,” he uttered. About the effect on business front, Chowdhary was of the opinion that health is more important than wealth. Moreover, the ban would be confined to a minor fraction, he told us.

“The manufacturers are barely going to get effected by the policy. The manufacturers who are making the parts for a specific model, primarily for diesel vehicles, might get adversely affected. But usually, the auto component ventures produce the parts for a multiple models and thus the ban won’t lead to any reduction in the demand,” said Chowdhary.

He also asserted the requirement of advanced policies to combat the rising pollution.

“We require better norms for emission controls. Also, the usage of methanol in engines should be introduced as they are completely pollution free as compared to diesel vehicles which emit the poisonous nitrogen” he said. “On the policy front, the taxes can be increased in order to reduce the usage of cars which emit harmful gases” Chowdhary concluded.