How much will the expenditure increase due to ethanol?
After the implementation of E-20 across the country, the biggest question is whether it will reduce the mileage of vehicles and how much impact it will have on the pockets of common people. In a price sensitive and mileage sensitive country like India, most vehicle owners keep an eye on the average of every liter of petrol and every kilometer. In such a situation, people’s concern about E-20 is natural. If a person travels 50 kilometers daily, how much can his fuel consumption and monthly expenses change by using E-20 petrol? What is the potential drop in mileage and is the difference really big enough for the average consumer to notice? To know the answers to all these questions, TV9 talked to experts. Let us understand the whole matter through expert opinion on different questions.
1. How many liters will the consumption increase?
Let us understand this with an example. Suppose earlier your car used to give a mileage of 15 km per liter and after ethanol it comes down to 14.2 km per liter, then your pocket money will increase on a monthly basis. To calculate this, it is assumed that if you drive 50 kilometers a day, it consumes approximately 99 liters of oil. So due to less mileage it will increase to 102 liters per month. Now if more oil is used then it is obvious that the expenses will increase. To understand how much the expenditure will increase, let us know the rate of ethanol in Delhi. Currently, E-20 petrol is around Rs 102 per liter in Delhi. So according to this, if your monthly oil expenditure is 3 liters more then it will be less than Rs 300 in money. On this, auto expert Tutu Dhawan said that if your budget is very tight every month then it will trouble you. Otherwise, this is not a huge amount, people eat ice cream in a month for this much money.
2. Expert opinion on mileage and maintenance
On the question related to mileage and maintenance, auto expert Avik Chattopadhyay said that mileage is affected. Along with this, maintenance has also increased. He said that if seen from the consumer’s point of view, the expenses have increased. Apart from this, if it is a new car then the damage in it will be slightly less but if it is an old car then the risk of damage in it has increased. In such a situation, not only the mileage will be reduced but the maintenance expenses will also be added to the budget. Overall, older car owners will be hit harder than new ones.
3. Mileage may reduce by 8-10% in E-10
World Auto Forum CEO Anuj Guglani said that ARAI has said that if you put E20 fuel in an E20 compliant vehicle, there will be a 2 to 6% mileage drop and it is also said that if you put E10 fuel in an E10 compliant vehicle, then the mileage can drop further by 8 to 10%. However, he also praised the government for this decision. He said that during the time of global crisis, there was a record increase in oil prices all over the world. Prices in Pakistan increased by 30-40 percent. At the same time, in India there was an increase of only 7 percent. Ethanol has played a major role in this.
4. What is the difference in energy density?
Ethanol is alcohol, its energy density is not as much as that of petrol. Energy density means how much energy will be produced by burning the same amount of water. On this, Vector editor Ashish Jha said that there is another aspect regarding energy density. We are discussing so much about petrol import, one thing is very important in that if you look at the ratio of pure petrol versus ethanol blended petrol, then for easy calculation, we take the figure of 100, so if you have 100% fuel in it, then off course it becomes 100. But E20 contains 20% ethanol petrol. If you extrapolate this, we will probably get a figure of around 104. There will be an incremental value of 2 to 4%. So the net petroleum that you are spending in the car will be around 82-83.
5. How much can fuel efficiency be reduced?
On this, Ask Car Guru founder Amit Khare said that according to me it is around 10-12%. He said that the smaller the size of the engines, the more the impact will be seen on them and the larger the size of the engines, the less will be the impact on them. This means that the efficiency will also depend on how strong the engine of the car is.
6. Is it against consumer regulations
On whether this policy is right under consumer rules, we asked consumer expert Prof. Asked Bejon Mishra. So he said that under the Consumer Protection Act, we have the right to get all the information correctly. It should be given in a language which we can understand and if it is not being given then something is going wrong.
