Does ethanol blending petrol affect the mileage of the vehicle?
Recently Ch!na blocked rare earth minerals and magnet exports to India. They also blocked speciality fertilizer and certain heavy duty tunnel boring machines used to create city metro or suway transport system. All these were taken by surprise by the Indian government and businesses as they never had any contingency plan as replacement. Lithium is a critical mineral which is used in modern day battery for electric vehicles to smartphone. Bajaj Auto, a leading two wheeler manufacturer in India was the first to raise the alarm that if they don’t get Lithium and rare earth materials from import, they may have to scale down production from August 2025.
Due to the panic in the automobile industry, a delegation of business team took Ch!nese visa in order to meet and discuss the issue with government officials there. Their visa was never cleared by the Ch!nese officials and the meeting never took place. The lithium battery pack costs 40-50% of an electric vehicle and Ch!na hold 70-80% control on this mineral and final product. This looked like a ‘sudden death’ case of an emerging industry as India make take a decade to develop Lithium mines, setup industries to make battery back.
No such crisis exists for Ethanol blended Petrol (E20 means 20% Ethanol and 80% Petrol) as raw materials from Indian farmers and their products like sugarcane, maize, broken rice, bamboo etc. This is additional income for the farmers and saving of foreign exchange. In both case, the amount is huge. Also the problem of range anxiety and search for suitable charging station, doesn’t exists regarding Ethanol blended petrol. Crop residue, which are often burned and cause pollution and smog, can provide additional money to the farmers. This is another example of waste to wealth generation scheme for the farmers. India saved Rs 99000 crore of forex reserves through ethanol blending in fuel 17.3 million metric tonnes of crude substituted 51.9 mn tonnes of CO2 emissions averted till mid-2024.
Despite the advantages of Ethanol blending, massive foreign exchange saving, expansion of Ethanol factories which provide jobs to rural people and taxes to the government, there is a strong negative narrative is being built by the leftist, communist, anti-national gangs who are on the payroll of the foreign funded NGOs. They are writing a lot against Ethanol blended petrol. The reasons for this is easy to understand. India’s dependence to Middle-East oil cartel is getting reduced. India is gaining energy security.
They are creating a narrative that Ethanol blended E20 petrol is reducing mileage and causing damage to the car parts. While government experts claim the mileage reduction is negligible or 1-2% if the vehicle is tuned. Many vehicles in India are E20 compliant since 2009 and all vehicles from 2023 are E20 compliant which doesn’t face any issues. But this anti-E20 Petrol story is expected to grow in future as anti-Indian journalist earn good propaganda money by writing anti-India articles.
Every transition causes some pain. They need to understand how polluted was Delhi in 1990s. A two-wheeler ride used to strain eyes due to Diesel smoke. This is the reason Supreme Court imposed CNG fleet for Delhi transport vehicles in 2002. This was a massive change as thousands of truck, tempo, auto-rickshaw and taxis need to deploy CNG tanks and relevant conversion kits. This was huge expenditure for low income transport operators of Delhi. Logistics was poor as there were only select few CNG refuelling stations and gas pressure was low. The transporters often stand in CNG queue for 36-48 hours to get few KG of gas which get consumed in half a day! At every CNG stations, there were miles and mile long queue and transporters were eating and sleeping in the queue itself.
That time Sheila Dikshit was Delhi CM and she anticipated this problem that the entire transport industry in Delhi will go for toss. Thus she kept avoiding the decision to impose mandatory CNG fuel for Delhi transport vehicles. Sensing her political inability, the Supreme Court imposed this rule in 2002.
Today Delhi transport is much better with large fleet of CNG vehicles and fuel stations. Similarly, Ethanol blending and flex engine will be good for the country. As more percentage of Ethanol is added to the Petrol, like E30, E40 etc. more foreign currency will be saved and farmer income to rise.
Indians need to ignore those so called senior journalists (read darbari journalists) who create all sorts of negative narratives, then bring foreign funded NGOs and finally link the narrative with a political agenda. The farmer’s agitations, stray dog protection, anti-CAA, anti-NRC agitations in Delhi were all promoted by foreign funded NGOs.
Picture source: Google / Respective rightful owner
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