SIAM Withdrew E20 Contamination Complaint Despite Industry Warnings: Report

A new report has revealed that India's leading carmakers, including Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, and Mahindra, privately raised serious concerns regarding E20 fuel contamination, even as their industry body publicly retracted a formal complaint. Internal communications and testing data reviewed by Reuters show that automobile manufacturers conducted extensive fuel sampling across twenty-one states and union territories over the past year.

Despite publicly supporting the government's nationwide rollout of petrol blended with 20% ethanol, carmakers harboured deep internal worries about elevated levels of chloride and moisture damaging customer vehicles.

Leaks reveal that the tests conducted on over two hundred and fifty fuel samples revealed alarmingly high chloride content. State-level data compiled by the industry recorded chloride readings reaching up to 570 parts per million in Rajasthan, 420 parts per million in Delhi, and 357 parts per million in Maharashtra, significantly surpassing the official permissible threshold of 3 parts per million.

Furthermore, moisture levels reached up to 13,000 parts per million in certain regions, against an official government benchmark of 3,000 parts per million. Senior technical executives noted in internal exchanges that organic chloride was directly responsible for rapid engine and fuel injector failures occurring within just two hundred kilometres of refuelling.

The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) had submitted an official letter to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on 28 July, highlighting that these contaminants cause severe component corrosion and immediate vehicle breakdowns. However, following strong government pushback, the industry body withdrew the letter, claiming that the sample size was insufficient and that internal numbers required further authentication and scientific validation.