Telco officials hinted at a price hike of all its vehicles including Indica, which will have a multi-point fuel injection engine by the year end. The technology upgradation will cost the company between Rs 30,000 to Rs 50,000 per vehicle excluding the customs, excise and other local duties payable on components, Telco's advisor J Ramnath said at a press conference here. However, he did not specify the extent of the additional cost to be passed on to customers.

Tata Industries' resident director Sujit Gupta said Telco's decision to go in for Euro-II norms compliant vehicles both in the passenger and the commercial category was self driven and not imposed by any Government order.

The company has developed an indigenous technology for the complete range of Telco vehicles. Thetechnology has been developed after two years of intensive research and development at the company's engineering research centres in Pune and Jamshedpur.

"We launched Indica in December 1998--designed to meet Euro-I norms 16 months prior to implementation of the then schedule for India 2000 norms (Euro I). Tata Cummins was the first to launch Euro-I compliant medium and heavy commercial vehicles in January 1999 when this was required by April 2000," Gupta said.

Telco's vice president (engineering research centre) RB Khadilkar said the route followed by the company to achieve Euro-II norms with the existing quality of fuel (0.25 per cent sulphur content in diesel) was high pressure fuel injection pumps, turbo chargers with inter-coolers, exhaust re-circulation and catalytic convertors.

For the petrol vehicles, the company has gone in for multi-point fuel injection engines, close loop air fuel ratio control, advanced three way catalytic convertors and exhaust air re-circulation.

Khadilkar said animportant aspect of the technology developed by Telco was that it meets emission norms with diesel that contains 0.25 per cent sulphur in diesel, the current fuel supplied in the national capital region.

He said that another key issue now was to improve the quality of fuel. While the country is moving towards Euro-II norms, it is not matched by the fuel quality. Petrol available in the country currently has three to five per cent benzene which is much higher than the international level of one per cent. Sulphur content in diesel in India is between 0.25 per cent to 0.50 per cent against international norms of 0.05 per cent.

Cleaner fuels can reduce emissions by upto 25 per cent in older generation, in-use vehicles, which constitute 90 per cent of the vehicular pollution. This is one of the most critical issues in the thrust for cleaner air, Khadilkar said.