Picture: Vehicles emitting smoke
India’s plan to remove millions of old, polluting automobiles from the roads is gaining momentum.
Approximately 57% of the 10,543 car owners surveyed by LocalCircles said that the decommissioning of the car should be due to the mileage on the odometer, not its age. Last year, the government required passenger vehicles over the age of 20 and commercial vehicles over the age of 15 to pass a roadworthiness test.
In addition, more than half of the consumers surveyed said that they intend to reduce the number of vehicles they own, as they believe that India’s cash purchase policy will make it more expensive to keep older cars. Authorities have increased the cost of car compliance tests since April, and car owners over the age of 15 will now have to spend eight times as much to renew their registration. A lack of public interest in getting rid of polluting vehicles is a potential impediment to India’s ambitions to be carbon neutral by 2070.
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Recycling old cars is very important to reduce emissions in India, as the adoption of electric vehicles is lagging behind due to a lack of charging lines and high battery costs. The National Center for Science and the Environment predicts that by 2025 there will be about 20 million old cars in India by the end of their life, causing severe damage to the environment.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the government expects the programme to attract new investments of more than 100 billion rupees ($1.3 billion) and reduce the country’s dependence on other metals. Modi said that car wrecks in India are currently unproductive because precious metals are not recycled and energy recovery is almost impossible.
But carmakers seem to be supporting the population. As Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. put it, “Age is not a good way to ruin a car.” President R. Bhargawa said in an interview. “There must be a logic according to which the car can drive safely on the road so as not to harm other road users.” The vehicle will be destroyed if it is considered invalid for the user to perform any repairs to obtain the certificate of validity.
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According to Bhargawa, personal vehicles must pass a compliance test at least every three years. In India, when a car is on the road, there are usually no additional checks to ensure that it meets the safety standards set at the time of sale.
“Many traffic accidents are caused by vehicle defects that are not checked regularly,” he said. India also needs large demolition centers, which are now dominated by small informal recycling facilities.
Maruti Suzuki and Toyota Tsusho With an annual investment of 440 million rupees, we have built together with a facility that removes and recycles more than 24,000 old vehicles. Mahindra MSTC Recycling Pvt. Ltd., which has a processing plant in Pune, is building four other demolition plants in western Maharashtra, with an annual capacity of 40,000 vehicles.