Saar: The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has urged carmakers to launch more CNG-powered vehicles.
At the 58th Annual SIAM Convention, there were a lot of important announcements made. Out of the lot, one was for the promotion and extensive usage of CNG (compressed natural gas) for vehicles. Dharmendra Pradhan, the minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, said that the Indian government is mulling to set-up 10,000 CNG stations nationwide by the year 2030. This is surely a promising bit of news for vehicle fleet operators, such as Ola and Uber, as most of their driver partners use CNG-powered vehicles. Presently, there are 1,424 CNG stations in India and most of them are concentrated in metro cities.
There are a number of advantages in spreading the CNG cause across the country. Firstly, it is considerably less expensive than the fossil fuels used to run our vehicle and hence doesn’t damage the common man’s wallet. Secondly, the compressed natural gas produces up to 30 per cent less CO2 in comparison to petrol or diesel fuels. That means it is kinder to the environment. Thirdly, we can produce it locally and hence there will less stress on the imports of crude oil, helping the economy grow stronger. And lastly, CNG-fed vehicles are also known to return marginally better fuel economy than petrol- or diesel-powered ones.
What’s more, the addition of more CNG stations will ensure that we won’t have to stand in long queues, which have become synonymous with the act of refilling CNG. However, the promotion of compressed natural gas also implicates the fact that the real transition from the use of internal combustion engines to pure electric power-plants will take a lot longer than it was originally anticipated. The government must ensure that while it promotes the use of CNG vehicles, it also starts working aggressively to build a robust infrastructure that will be required for pure electric vehicles.
Back to CNG. Currently, only Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai sell CNG variants of their products in India. Ford is tipped to join that list soon. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has urged other carmakers to launch more CNG-powered models in the future to help curb the problem of rising air pollution levels in India.
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