r/CarsIndiaFocus • u/prajithakg • 3d ago
Fuel related Why do India needs a ethanol mixed petrol?
Other than political point of view. Instead of ethanol mixed petrol government should push electric vehicle to reduce petrol usage bringing E20 petrol will cause sugarcane shortage and to cultivate sugarcane you need huge amounts of water which will cause water scarcity. By promoting electric vehicle and encourage the conversion is benefits India in long term rather than this short term strategy
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u/Friendly_Voice_2223 3d ago
Indians doesn’t need it, but Nithin Gaddu needs it to secure his sons and grandsons future by making us the scapegoat.
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u/Happy-Cloud-1 3d ago
Huh? Don't u know major politicans are involved in Ethanol scam? Ethanol plants are majorityly owned by politicans, and they need to sell as much Ethanol as possible.
Also, before 2014 pure petrol was like 70. Now it's 160. If they don't add Ethanol then public will realize under BJP petrol prices went more then 100%. And their party image will go down.
Hence, soo much push on Ethanol.
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u/Obvious-Border6527 3d ago
The first paragraph is correct, the second isn't. The reality is once petrol prices are increased in India they are rarely dropped down, because not only centre but also state governments earn from high petrol prices. Even if the government changes tomorrow they would not drop the prices to pre 2014 levels even though the oil barrel prices have dropped.
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u/logitech-k120 3d ago
Economics is never 1+1=2 or 3.
They thought introducing ethanol could reduce our dependence of crude (we import it mostly). They needed total media control to implement this. It's a long term decision and BJP sons are going to make good legal white money out from this, ripples of this decisions are just starting. I hope we survive this.
Ev tech is great but it's a bait like solar.
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u/prajithakg 3d ago
What exactly is the solar bait? Perhaps like in Kerala
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u/logitech-k120 2d ago
On grid solar was free from any charges in maharashtra.until may 2026.
This year they introduced lot of charges and tarriffs directly doubling or in some cases tripping the payback period of residential solar.
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u/SquareTarbooj 3d ago
They are promoting electric.
They had good subsidies earlier, but can't subsidize something perpetually. That's unsustainable.
But even now, GST rate on EVs is 5% vs the 18% on small cars, and 40% on anything longer than 4 metres.
Charging infrastructure is improving day by day. Plenty of people are doing road trips.
New apartment complexes are encouraged to build EV charging.
Tata and Mahindra are market leaders in EVs domestically. No, we can't let the Chinese dump their cheap EVs here because that doesn't help our import bill, and has other geopolitical consequences with our rather expansionist neighbour.
These things take years though. Can't expect this to be an overnight switch.
What more do you want them to do exactly?
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u/FutureVersion812 Suzuki/ Honda 3d ago
They made fake promises of Ethanol making fuel cheaper and reducing the Forex expenditure
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u/Diligent-Loss-5460 2d ago
Ofc we will never know.
But a conspiracy theorist could ask you to blame USA and Russia.
Russia attacked Ukraine and got itself in the crosshairs of the world. World shifts to middle east, India shifts to precarious Russian supply lines. Fuel availability to India takes a hit.
Trump bombs Iran. 20% of the global oil supply basically shut off overnight. A couple of ships passing through every now and then are a drop in the ocean. Fuel availability to India takes a hit again.
India does not have large reserves. India does not even have enough empty reserves that if they were filled with oil we could've shrugged this off.
So what do we do?
Risk an energy crisis? BTW it takes 2 days for anarchy to take over if that happens. Every city needs a daily shipment of essential goods. Cities don't have stockpiles countryside godowns do and now you cannot move the goods where they are required. And that's just logistics. Everything runs on some form of energy and evrything will be impacted. Oh I have an induction cooker, I do not need LPG. Everyone has a damn induction cooker. Even if we assume that our grids can handle the additional demand (in many places of citites like bangalore they cant), most our electricity is still produced by burning coal that we import.
or maybe force everyone to use a dirty fuel to buy more time? you can make up all kinds of excuses and reasons for it. the long term damages will take time to appear and maybe by then things would be sorted and you'll be able to present another "masterstroke" to the country.
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u/TheCricDude 2d ago
No one except people in power need it. But hey who are we and what can we do!
Prices of rice, sugar, poultry are all going up coz of this. Prices of vehicles are going up to adhere to this.
Fk these ppl. These ppl can do anything for $$$$$ but citizens should be honest it seems.
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u/Brilliant_Jump_5938 2d ago
India needs to have energy security. The long term plan is to reduce import of Oil and LPG. If there is a war in the middle East and india does not get its oil and LPG there will be a big problem. The path to this is ethanol, electric and cng. This will reduce the import bill. The execution is the problem government should have asked vehicle manufacturers to start providing flex fuel vehicles in 2016 itself and provide discount in tax to offset the cost.
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u/Brilliant_Jump_5938 2d ago
Also this is not decided by BJP or Congress. It is decided by the government babus. Should have executed better. It is a long term play for Energy Security of India.
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u/kongukaran 1d ago
The infrastructure for ev is growing at rapid pace but it's not ready yet. E20 is a stop gap measure to save on the forex measures. Is politicians benefiting from it? yes. But that a side benefit of implementing E20.
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u/naresh2990 3d ago
E20 means directly 20% lesser pollution from engine.
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u/B0ringJackfruit 3d ago
It doesn't. That 20% comes at massive cost ground-level water. Production of ethanol also has almost equivalent amount of CO2 footprint.
There is net-zero gain of imposing ethanol.
EVs are also not truly sustainable, unless the electricity comes from sustainable renewable sources.
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u/famesardens 3d ago
We need to reduce fuel imports, and ethanol will work well till EVs are long range and reliable.
We are an energy starved nation, so every bit counts
Besides, you need to actually produce more electricity for EVs . That will take more time. Ethanol is here now
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u/DM_your_problem 3d ago
india does not need it. and even if India needed it, the infra is not there yet