Former Cricketer Venkatesh Prasad Targets Maruti Suzuki: Asks Govt To Not Dilute CAFE3 Norms For Small Cars
The Government of India recently released the draft of CAFE 3 (Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency) norms. These norms will come into effect from March 2027. This time around, the petrol cars under ≤909 kg and ≤4 m length have been given some relaxation, which will benefit Maruti Suzuki, which has a lot of small cars in its line-up. Recently, former Indian cricketer Venkatesh Prasad shared a tweet online in which he requested the government not to provide any such relaxation.
Former cricketer requests govt not to relax CAFE 3 norms
The post on not providing relaxation to smaller cars in India under the new CAFE 3 norms has been shared on X by Venkatesh Prasad on his page. In his post, the cricketer urged the Government of India not to relax Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency 3 norms. He highlighted that diluting the norms may help one automaker (Maruti Suzuki).
However, it will hurt India's clean air goals. Additionally, it will also damage India's climate commitments and increase overall pollution. Venkatesh Prasad, in his post, even tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, along with Union Minister Hardeep Puri, to look into his request.
The cricketer's blanket statement seems to ignore ground reality. Here's a detailed response on why his demand is both unreasonable and unsound.
What is CAFE 3?
For those who may not be aware, CAFE 3 norms are the rules that tell automotive companies how fuel-efficient their cars need to be on a fleet-basis (sum of total emissions divided by number of cars sold). As for the changes in the CAFE 3 norms from CAFE 2 norms, instead of a fixed carbon dioxide limit, the new rules depend on how heavy a company's cars are. This system incentivizes lighter, more fuel efficient cars over heavier, fuel guzzling cars. That's exactly what good policy should look like.
As per the older policy, if an automaker's fleet is composed of lighter cars like hatchbacks, they have a lower carbon dioxide allowance because they need to be more fuel-efficient. On the other hand, automakers with heavier fleets have a higher allowance for the same.
Clearly, this is something that doesn't sit right, as it wrongly disincentivizes smaller cars that use lesser resources across the spectrum - be it fuel, materials, manufacturing emissions or even space occupied on the streets.
Rightfully, the government, through the new policy, has now given a special relaxation to smaller cars in the new CAFE 3 norms.
The Government of India has proposed that smaller cars get an additional 3 g/km carbon dioxide deduction. This effectively eases the target for small hatchbacks, which makes it easier for Maruti Suzuki, which produces highly fuel efficient, light cars to become compliant. As a result of this news, Maruti Suzuki's shares recently reached an all-time high of Rs 16,435.
Other automakers are not happy
Due to this special norm, some automakers like Tata and Hyundai may also see a relaxation just like Maruti. However, they and many other automakers also have fleets composed of bigger vehicles. Due to this, those carmakers have highlighted that this preferential relief favours Maruti Suzuki unfairly.
They added that this bias undermines fairness in the world's third-largest car market. These companies also highlighted that this relaxation reduces the pressure on benefiting automakers to electrify their small cars. Also, it may delay EV adoption and innovation in India, which goes against India's net-zero and clean mobility goals.
It has to be noted that there are some flexibility provisions. Up to three car companies can pool their sales to meet the target. Also, if automakers introduce carbon dioxide-saving technologies, they can get a cap.