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Switching to petrol vehicles will not resolve issues related to pollution as it has 25 per cent higher CO2 levels than diesel, Roland Folger, managing director and CEO, Mercedes-Benz India told The Hindu in an interview. He said the year ahead does not look as easy as anticipated for the German auto maker due to decisions such as the ban on diesel vehicles of over 2000cc in the national capital. However, the company is aiming for a good two-digit growth. On his four months as India chief, Folger said it had been exciting and felt more like one month.'' Last year we came back to number one position in India
meeting, slightly exceeding our sales target. ''But then again, a new year is a new start. You have to prove yourself again to the customers. It is not as easy as anticipated with what is going on in Delhi. But I think we have a few good solutions on short-term as well as long-term basis,'' he said. He said there were a lot of things that can be learned from other countries. ''Whether you look towards the US or Europe, we have been going through same kind of experiences. We had very bad condition of air over there as well. We significantly reduced the emissions. We appropriately combined that with, for instance, increasing the quality of our fuel, now to Euro 6 standard
that is a solution that we have applauded very much by being moved forward to 2020 now in India.'' He said frequent policy changes in India were really disruptive. ''We have a lead time normally in our planning of 6-9 months depending on different types of vehicles. As far as our SUVs are concerned, you are getting your parts from as far as Germany or in our case sometimes the US. Naturally, you have a very long lead time. ''So to do any adjustments in short-term is really difficult. Germany has been quite helpful from our perspective in enabling us to do more switches from diesel to petrol. "But I have to say we don't feel entirely comfortable with it because we know from our experience in Europe that by switching from diesel to petrol you are increasing CO2 levels. Petrol cars by definition have roughly 25 per cent higher CO2 levels.'' He suggested that the ban on sales of vehicles with over 2,000 cc engines was misconceived as manufacturers would simply make slightly smaller engines of say 1,900 cc, which would make little difference to the emission levels. ''If you look at other countries and how they have approached it
the US more with a view on petrol because they don't have high petrol prices and can afford it. Europe, which has to import all their oil and gas, was under pressure and therefore started to go the diesel way. If the whole of Europe can go the diesel way, it is difficult to understand why that cannot be a continued direction also for India. ''What we felt was that [the ban] was little bit less appropriate, the fact that it basically affected mainly us and our relative segment. :Other car makers were not much affected. If you see now, Mahindra is bringing down their engine sizes down to 1.9 litre. The question is that do we now really assume that this can help with our emission problem that everybody goes down to 1.9 litre engine, because this will happen next. But this is not the solution to our problem.''
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