Mahindra considering alternate ways to cope with diesel SUV ban

Mahindra & Mahindra is considering petrol variants of its XUV500 and Scorpio SUVs in order to cope with the Supreme Court's temporary ban on registrations of new diesel vehicles powered by over 2,000cc engines in Delhi-NCR.

Announced at the unveiling of the KUV100, Pawan Goenka, executive director of Mahindra & Mahindra, said that the petrol variants will be available in the medium to long term, and not in the course of next few months. He added that the process of creating a petrol line for the company’s other products is already underway as well.

Goenka said that the company would consider customer feedback as well. M&M already sells the 2.2-litre petrol Scorpio in some export markets, but did not launch the product in India due to negligible demand. Apart from this, the company is also studying options of downsizing the 2,000cc-plus engines to 2,000cc or less.

Speaking about the short-term impact of the verdict, Goenka said that M&M dealers currently have an inventory of more than 1,000 vehicles in NCR and the automaker is working on shifting them to sell them in other parts of the country.

Mahindra is also working on converting some bookings of the XUV500 and Scorpio to the 1.5-litre TUV300 and the recently announced KUV100 (which will be launched with 1.2-litre diesel and petrol engines).

While terming the pollution issue as a "serious one" which demands immediate measures to be undertaken, he emphasised that all problems should not be attributed to diesel vehicles. Expressing faith in the judiciary, Goenka said that the company will abide by all the decisions but also hoped that the industry will get a fair chance to express their views. The Supreme Court will be hearing the case on diesel vehicles on January 5, 2016. He also stressed on the fact that the IIT Kanpur report on pollution levels in Delhi, which was commissioned by the government of Delhi, should be released soon so that the industry may get a chance to read, understand and make recommendations on it.

The implementation of bio-diesel fuels as a lesser polluting option to be used by manufacturers was suggested by Goenka and said that M&M is “capable of producing biodiesel vehicles from tomorrow.” He also batted for electric vehicles, highlighting their “zero-emission” characteristics and said that the government would give more incentives to automakers for manufacturing EVs in the country.