[lapis_lazuli]

E20 and E20 plus rated petrol would be the norm, in the years to come. Really, the target is very very close. In the next 2-5 years. Most of us, have spent good amount of money, paid road tax for 15 years, and we are petrol heads. Going by the sly politicians, the highly motivated sugarcane lobby, the SIAM recommendations and the absolute silence by the individual automakers, it almost sounds like a conspiracy. I have personally written to many automakers on Twitter, none have responded if their cars, the new launches and mainstream, are E20 and E20+ compliant. There's no clarity if E10 fuel would continue to be sold for non E20 vehicles.

There are many research papers, that clearly state the detrimental effects of too much alcohol on the human liver and unsurprisingly, many car parts too. Fuel systems, tanks, injection systems and other subtle ways.

Trusting the collective knowledge of forum members, and many with real insider connections, let us create a ready reckoner here, for the greater good.

I am not sure how to go about, but most willing to contribute, if someone files a PIL, (like Waseem)

We are looking at a graveyard of cars, or perhaps, a business opportunity of converting E10 to E20 plus : who knows may be there would be retrofit "conversion kits". That would be really good, but may turn out to be like the disorganized CNG fitting market!

As usual, Maruti is "ready with E20 compliant engines by April 2023" and that would be cited as an example whenever the guv is questioned "if they can, why not you".

I am unhappy, upset and anxious : I love my cars and I can't just let them rot in hell. And, I will not buy a Maruti: it does not fulfill my needs... nor the wants!

Let the information flow in, people. It is a HUGE threat we are looking at. Time to act, is really, yesterday.

[Mustang_Boss]

The current crop of Maruti cars recommend fuels upto 10% Ethanol blend.

Sadly, the current owners could do nothing about it.



I have cross checked this, before my purchase couple of months ago and this was the norm, except some CKD/CBU cars, probably.

But Luckily, if we run through numbers, we could find some solace.

India's consumption is 5 mil barrels a day of Crude.
Which gives us 5 Mill * 100 L per barrel =~ 500 crore liters of petrol per day. (Numbers are lower ~88-93, but lets consider 100 for simplicity)
Of which, if the government intends to add 20% Ethanol, which would be 100 crore liters of Ethanol.

Considering a 50% Yield of Alcohol from Sugar (for simplicity), The additional gross consumption of sugar will be 200 Crore Kgs of Sugar per day, which a country like India cannot manage in the long.

Considering how our alcohol consumption is growing, it could be difficult (For Personal/party consumption, industrial usage & sanitizers)

So, you will continue to get a better fuel. The Ethanol blend will be short lived or would be much lesser in reality.

[SR-71]

Except for the BMWs, I don’t think any car in India is compliant with anything greater than E10 today. BMWs are E25 compliant. This thread may get populated in the future as manufacturers come out with flex-fuel or E20-compliant vehicles.

[bobbyblr]

First we can try removing the ethonal from petrol as per the below video:

https://youtu.be/RO1hsaxaMXo

Second we need to ask all the oil distribution companies to mention the percentage of ethonal content in petrol at the fuel dispenser.

Third we can pay a little premium to get non-ethonal blended petrol.

[CEF_Beasts]

AFAIK, BMW Petrol engines are the only E20(&+) compatible engines (E25 compatible to be more specific) in India at the moment.

As mentioned in the owner’s manual:

[Brishti]

Current Kia Seltos, Jeep Compass and old 1.8L TSI Octavia are E10 compliant as read in their manual but Octavia can take much higher RON than the others.

My KIA dealer told me the new 1.5L Turbo that will come soon will take more RON & upto E20

[Shreyans_Jain]

As on date, there is no mass market car that is E20 compliant. Many of them are E10 compliant, but E20 is a different ball game altogether.

Basically, unless manufacturers don’t come up with a retrofit E20 compliance kit solution, all of us petrol car owners are going to be screwed in the near future. Double whammy for us NCR people who can’t just go the diesel way either.

It is also a fact that a lot of petrol being sold today is already E5 and E10 grade. It has been this way for some time now. The fuel bunk owners know, and they only come to know once they get the tanker. They have no control over what they get.

[SR-71]

Originally Posted by bobbyblr

Second we need to ask all the oil distribution companies to mention the percentage of ethonal content in petrol at the fuel dispenser.

Third we can pay a little premium to get non-ethonal blended petrol.

This is how the pumps are typically stateside, they are segregated and labeled. Unfortunately, IMHO futile to have such an expectation here. First, there seems to be a lack of proper planning even at the government level. Second, there is an investment cost here from pump owners end, separate tanks, dispensers etc. There is bound to be reluctance as many of them just did upgrades for higher octane fuel. Last, if there is price parity, I expect shady pumps to take advantage of the price parity and screw over the customers by dispensing the lower grade fuel. This whole role out seems to be a mess, but at this point no one seems to care about it

[Shreyans_Jain]

Originally Posted by bobbyblr

Second we need to ask all the oil distribution companies to mention the percentage of ethonal content in petrol at the fuel dispenser.

Third we can pay a little premium to get non-ethonal blended petrol.

Originally Posted by SR-71

Second, there is an investment cost here from pump owners end, separate tanks, dispensers etc. There is bound to be reluctance as many of them just did upgrades for higher octane fuel.

It is not about premium fuels or investment or resistance from dealer end. I can confirm that even premium fuels like XP95 being sold today are E12. This is how the fuel is coming from the refinery/depot. I reiterate - dealers have no control over what they are getting. Ethanol is being mixed into every grade of petrol you are buying today, and the % is only going to increase in future.

[HooghlyBoy]

AFAIK, the now discontinued Ford Ecosport was E20 Compliant. This will make it a hot property in used car market in coming times.

[achats]

I read through a lot of online content on India's E20 journey before opting to go for a new car this year itself. As per most accounts, its impossible to achieve the 2025 E20 target, looking at the current amounts of sugarcane and ethanol production etc. And even if it is somehow achieved, considering the millions of cars and two wheelers that cannot sip the fuel, the Govt will have to either sell E10 fuel parallelly for the next 10 years or so or force automakers to come up with a conversion kit, which I believe is available in Brazil and is a pretty cheap process. Note that cars in India became E10 compliant way back in 2008 but countrywide E10 fuel rollout was achieved only in 2022.

[AROO7]

I really don't think government or the babus coming up with these rules give two hoots to whether petrol cars selling at present are mostly E10 complaint or how much environmental impact will the increased sugarcane production will be have (to deliver country wide E20 India needs 1000 crore liters and as of now only produces 450 crore liters leaving a gap of 550 liters). I seriously doubt they even did the due diligence of checking the implications of using higher ethanol on natural resources and public in general. That said, what I fail to understand how the common man is just bearing up with this when it's a known fact that E20 fuel results in drop of fuel efficiency (considering our fuel-efficiency obsessed public in general).

Rant aside I feel any fuel that is subsidized by government or brought paying from forex reserves are and will be the prime target of the policy makers in present as well as future. To better understand let's take a dive into past events one at a time.

First they heavily discouraged diesel cars as in general it is very sensitive to price rise (read small price increase snowballs into rapid increase in transportation cost thus increasing cost of every daily consumed/used items). Coming to petrol it is time and again proven that people are flexible to price increase, although they might protest for a day or two but things go back to normal very soon. So it is clear which fuel government will try to wean off public from first.

To set the weaning process in motion the government started enforcing stricter emissions norms and jumping emission stages. In the process it got the first support from none other than Maruti Suzuki (read unintentional), when they were unable to successfully transition to BS VI diesel and thus went back to petrol only portfolio (they are such hypocrites who once praised diesel for how efficient fuel it was and its low cost of running and now to hide their incompetency they had the balls to put a calculator on their website which showed that no matter how much you drive daily petrol is the best fuel for you). This single exercise by them gave a massive push towards petrol-powered vehicles as the majority diesel buying public were one way or the other dependent on the brand and its 1.3 DDIS engine powered models (how do I know that, well apart from the sales figure the worlds most renowned fuel-injector maker's two assembly line in India which made over 1 lakh injectors each for the above engine were permanently closed due to this decision, so you can imagine how much of these diesel cars used to sell).

The second push came from NGT by reducing the operational life of diesel cars in Delhi and NCR (the cluster of most densely populated union territory and cities). But since the population started embracing petrol cars and the load shifted to petrol, some ingenious must have thought on capitalizing the opportunity by increasing ethanol in petrol. Kills two birds with one arrow, have even lesser fuel left before elections to subsidies (to off-set global price increase or rupee valuation taking a plunge) and sugar lobby will be more than happy with a new market created for their produce.

Fast forward to present where they are saying E20 petrol will come in entire India by 2025 but in the meantime are silently increasing ethanol content. It was 1.53% in 2013-14 which went up to 5% in 2019-20 and then was bumped to 8.10% in 2020-21 and as of now is at 10.17% (source- livemint). But one must say government should realize that current petrol cars are in majority only E10 complaint then why they have already breached 10% mark.

This can be understood by another crucial event which happened early this year when the present governments announced its ambitious plan to cut greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide) emissions by one billion tonnes from 2030 onward. Since they can't just wait for 2030 to come and then act they have already set the wheels in motion. For doing this they again started by targeting the weakest person in the food chain i.e. we the common public.

As diesel has already been taken care off with the final nail in the coffin to be delivered by BS VI pahse-2 roll-out and thus leaving the new diesel car owners in minority. Petrol will be next on governments agenda and can be verified by the fact that the petroleum ministry is leaving no stones upturned to ensure the roll-out of E20 fuel in select cities by the new year which is way ahead of April 2023 target. Also by gradually increasing the ethanol content in normal petrol the lifespan of E10 petrol cars will be reduced forcing the owners to replace old cars with new ones. Some might say there will be a fix from carmakers to make the older cars complaint or separately make E10 fuel available. To that I would say if they were to do so then what are they waiting for the fuel is about to come. And were they such saints then they would have rather taken steps to explore the possibility of retro-fitting ICE cars with EV power train (Bosch showed this was possible years back on a Maruti Baleno) but instead they have forced car owners to scrap or sell perfect running cars just because it is 15/10 years old.

Now talking about the future going by the past record of our policymakers it is just a matter of time when they will realize that EVs being charged from normal electricity from the grid, and it is increasing India's dependence on thermal powered plant. Some ingenious ideas would pop-up (read rules) to counter this too. Because apart from the pledge of reducing greenhouse India has also promised to meet its 50% energy needs from renewable energy by 2030. And there are very bleak chance that it will be going to increase the electricity produced from thermal power plants. So to conclude no matter which car or fuel-type we have or are planning to get no one is actually safe, only the timeline differs.

[supermax]

European countries have made E10 thr default petrol since 2016 if I recollect correctly. Already with 10% blend itself, there are issues which crop up if the car is left unused for long as the water separates. This will be a far more serious issue with a 20% blend. Definitely not a good development.

[BoneCollector]

The Grand Vitara manual has this to say about petrol-ethanol blend.

Basically, they've thrown the ball in the owner's court. Use 20% blend at your own jurisdiction (risk) and switch back to 10% if not satisfied.

[trail_lover]

I think all new cars being sold at present are already E10 compliant. The percentage of ethanol blending mandated by the govt will be such that it suits all automobiles below the age 15 years. The govt itself cant take vehicles off the road indirectly by stopping sale of suitable fuel, after it permitted it's citizens by taking road tax for 15 years. However, there is a problem after the vehicle completes 15 years but only if entire India transitions to E20.


Transitioning to E10 itself pan India is going to be extremely challenging due to molasses availability issues at sugar factories, and given climate change and other factors sugarcane crop production to meet E10 is doubtful. In order to get to E20 pan India it's going to take 10 years or more. We don't want to be cultivating sugarcane for fuel by compromising on food production for the masses. The total cultivated area in India is reducing drastically year by year in India.

The real scare is for people living in metros if air quality levels get out of control. In that case governments might mandate in the future that only E20 be sold within metro limits. For instance, diesel car owners have been suffering the sudden onslaught of regulations in NCR and when air quality levels plummet they are also temporarily banning BS-3 vehicles and older to ply on the roads.