Business - India;Maruti to rejig line-up to meet EU’s ELV norms by ’10

Chanchal Pal Chauhan

NEW DELHI: Passenger carmarket leader Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) plans to revamp
its entire product portfolio to meet the tough European Union’s end-of-life vehicle (ELV) recycling standards by 2010.

The first car to meet these stringent ELV norms will be the yet-to-be-launched A-Star hatchback, to be followed by Splash next year. Other future cars like Kizashi premium sedan as well as its current products will also meet ELV norms in the next two years.

Maruti will replace hazardous raw materials like lead, mercury, cadmium and chrome with more eco-friendly commodities. The global compact car A-Star meeting ELV standards will be 85% recyclable. It will also be able to use 10% ethanol-blended petrol and its K-series engine will comply with Euro-V emission norms. However, as the required kind of fuel is not available in the Indian market, the A-Star to be launched in the domestic market will confirm to Euro-III emission norms.

MSI managing executive officer (Engineering) IV Rao told ET: “We are looking at total transformation of our products to meet environment norms. While ELV is mandatory in the European Union, we will voluntarily adopt the norms in India to churn out green cars. We will upgrade all our cars to meet the stringent Euro-IV norms and our future cars will also have new engines to deliver higher fuel efficiency.”

The company will undertake a massive exercise to eliminate current production practices and replace the hazardous materials currently being used. In the fresh supply contracts it will be procuring more of eco-friendly commodities. “Going forward, we will be putting in a host of processes. Like a new metal plating method will be incorporated for manufacturing future cars. The extra-valent chrome will take place of the currently used intra-valent chrome which will completely change our metal surface treatment processes,” Mr Rao said.

The company has also asked a majority of its 250 bigger vendors to adopt the new ecological balanced processes and use eco-friendly metals in their manufacturing. All its vendors will switch over to these technologies by 2010.
Maruti is also contemplating adopting stop-and-start technology to decrease fuel burn in its cars.

The new technology is expected to lead to a 10-15% reduction in fuel consumption. Bigger OEMs, like BMW, Peugeot Citroen, which used the stop-and-start technology, have achieved a lower fuel burn of 15%, besides lesser noise and vibration during cars’ stop phases.