Daimler seeks ban on sale of BS3 vehicles

Alleges other OEMs have been aggressively pushing sale of older vehicles

New Delhi, March 27: Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) on Monday said Bharat Stage 3 (BS3) vehicles should not be allowed to sell in the country after April 1, the deadline for switch to Bharat Stage 4 (BS4) norms, as it is already scaling down such vehicles.

“In the current environment, OEMs ramping up BS3 vehicles aggressively before March 31 could create imbalance to OEMs like BharatBenz that are ramping down BS3 vehicles,” DICV managing director and CEO Erich Nesselhauf said.

Selling BS3 vehicles should not be allowed after April 1, or at least the sales of those vehicles should be penalised in order to set off the additional cost and environment burden society has to absorb, he added.

“In general, it should not be allowed that some OEMs gain additional margins, delaying the implementation of the urgently needed new BS4 environmental standards,” Mr Nesselhauf said.

The company believes that the industry’s interests can and must go together with those of society at large, he added.

BS4 will bring the muchneeded improvements in terms of air quality to the benefit of the people and the environment, Mr Nesselhauf felt.

The Supreme Court is seized of the matter where automobile manufacturers are seeking permission for disposing of around 8.2 lakh BS3 vehicles in stock.

It has indicated that either it will ban registration of such vehicles or impose costs to compensate for the health hazards created by pollution.

DICV said it has over the past few months not only aggressively phased out its BS3 production and stocks, but have also begun production of BS4 in full swing.

“We are now preparing for the launch of an entirely new environmentfriendly and even more fuel-efficient range of BharatBenz trucks early April — featuring our BS4 solution based on Daimler SCR technology,” Mr Nesselhauf said.

DICV’s entire BharatBenz product range of trucks above 9 tonnes to 49 tonnes has been available as BS4 variants since August 2015.

The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) had submitted data on manufacturing and sale of BS3 vehicles on a monthly basis from January 2016 and told the court that the firms were holding stock of around 8.24 lakh such vehicles, including 96,000 commercial vehicles, over 6 lakh two-wheelers and around 40,000 three-wheelers.

The manufacturers told the court that they were allowed to sell their stocks with old emission norms on previous two occasions when the industry had switched to BS2 and BS3 in 2005 and 2010. — PTI