In the following interview, Sandesh Kamath, President, Emission Controls Association Manufactuirers Association talks to ETAuto’s Sumantra Bibhuti Barooah about preparations for BSVII, business sustainability strategies for the EV era, India as a global base for emission control technology engineering, and more.
How does the emission control systems industry see BSVII, in terms of business opportunity, and also as a catalyst for newer technologies?
India normally follows Europe in this. So EU seven is what, more or less, with our some specific requirements, it will come into India. That’s what we feel. And technologies for that kind of requirement are ready. It has to be tested and with some tweaks, basis the requirement customisation for India, it will serve the purpose.
And, how big is the industry opportunity?
From the LD (Light Duty vehicles) perspective, we see it should touch somewhere between 7 million to 7.5 million cars by 2030, on the optimistic side. Or, the other way I can put it out is we see a CAGR of 3% on an average.
From the HD (Heavy Duty vehicles) perspective, it’s a tough market, we are already among the leading truck markets in the world. But ,if the road conditions improve, and the way the government is thinking about waterways and other road infrastructure which is planned, we should see a good improvement in the truck market.
Growth has also come because once GST came in, lot of these gates where checks used to happen have gone so the trucks cover longer distances, the longer distances the trucks cover the better it is for our industry.
There’s also a shift happening from ICE vehicles to electric. That must also be a concern for the emission control systems industry.
Most of the industry players have invested into sustainable businesses, which would cater to either alternate fuel or battery or hydrogen fuel cell, at least in one of these.
Every player has diversified into these things. But what is going to work? What is going to be dominant? That’s something still not known to people or nobody’s got a crystal ball today, so that’s where it stands, but ICE will continue to be there.
Flex fuel looks very promising, and we are looking towards Brazil from that perspective. Hydrogen ICE is also a promising solution when it comes to heavy duty, from what we see. EV will completely depend on the infrastructure the way it comes, but two-wheelers and intra-city transport for small transport from e-commerce companies, and a lot of these ITES services companies will easily shift to EV is what we understand as we look into the market today.
BS VII is maybe a couple of years away, but with what the European Union has proposed for Euro 7, how much investment do you think the industry players would have to make here to prepare for BS VII?
Actually, nobody is as of now clear on this, because there are a few norms, like nitrous oxide (N2O), which they are for factoring. I’m not sure if India is going to factor it or not. And the particulate matter (from braking) also. These two things will play a critical role. That is not very clear yet.
The frugal engineering advantage of India. We have seen in the past, some Tier1s and technology companies have leveraged their Indian engineering bases,to make their solutions more cost effective/efficient, not only for India but also for global markets. Is something like that likely to happen for emission control technologies also now?
Yes, there is, there is a demand I’m seeing for localisation, but for it to fully flourish, we need some more investment coming in from the OEMs. For example, what I hear is Ford is trying to come back to India to cater to their export market, correct? So it is keeping in mind the local Make in India, local advantages, not only from the after treatment perspective, but from the complete value chain of components. That’s something promising. I also see that India can continue to be the ICE capital of the world if all key markets like Europe try to focus on EV, and China is anyway focusing on EV. So, to do some of this old technology work which they may still need, they may look at India.
So the share of India in those businesses could grow?
Could grow, provided the OEMs do the investment for increase of capacity, and similarly, all the people in that value chain increase their investment.
