After initiating star labelling on electronics and appliances,the government is likely to notify bringing of the automobile sector under the purview of ratings based on fuel efficiency by September. According to senior official in the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) said an announcement regarding the same is likely to be made within a fortnight. "BEE,Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) and Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has reached a consensus. A formal announcement on the same (star rating) is likely to be made in the next two weeks," BEE Director General Ajay Mathur said. He said a notification will be issued by September this year. "To begin with,energy efficiency ratings of vehicles will be kept voluntary for manufacturers but from April 2012 it will be made mandatory," Mathur added. It is to be noted that the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) has been against any such policy,although its members have been voluntarily disclosing mileage of different models as certified by the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI). The labelling programme would be notified by the Ministry of Power and the labelling regulations would be notified by the BEE. It will provide consumers information about fuel consumption on a particular model and also through star rating (on a scale of one-star to five-stars) provide information on the relative fuel consumption of the model compared to other models in the same weight class. The BEE has already implemented a similar labelling programme for electronics,home appliances and transformers etc ,wherein the rating is considered to be the differentiator of consumer choice. In case of motor vehicles,the BEE label would include an informative component (the fuel consumption of the model in litres/100 km) and a comparative component (the star rating of the model on a five-star scale). The 2011 label will be based on the 2009-10 data for the fuel consumption of all models that were sold in that year. The 2011-12 labelling programme would apply till 2014-15. "The labelling programme would be recalibrated in 2014-15,using 2013-14 data,for application from 2015-16 till 2018- 19," Mathur added. The proposed standards specify the fuel consumption norms that manufacturers will have to meet.
