Car story: Two homologation facilities coming up soon

NEW DELHI: India may be aspiring to become a global hub for passenger cars, but it still lacks proper research, development and vehicle-testing facilities. And in a bid to correct this anomaly, the government has approved the setting up of two new homologation facilities, taking the total number of such facilities across the country to five.

The new ones are coming up at Manesar (Haryana) and Pune and are expected to work as a shot in the arm for myriad automobile majors having manufacturing facilities in and around these two locations. These companies include Maruti Udyog, Hero Honda Motors, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India etc.

For most car, two-wheeler and even tractor manufacturers, homologation has been both expensive and time-consuming till now. With only two all-vehicle homologation facilities - ARAI in Pune and VRDE in Ahmednagar (both in Maharashtra) - almost all new vehicle models have an interminable wait for getting this mandatory certification.

The latest move will mean automobile manufacturers in the North getting speedier certification. But several deficiencies in the overall testing and R&D infrastructure for automobiles remain even now.

For example, except for Tatas, nobody in India has a crash-test facility. This test, which evaluates how safe a car model would be during crash situations, is mandatory for every new model, but since the infrastructure needed for such a test is not available, all non-Tata automobile models are forced to get this done in faraway France.

Then, many car makers are capable of manufacturing and selling Euro IV- compliant vehicles, but since there are no testing facilities for this either, many such vehicles are being exported after being manufactured at Indian plants but are not being introduced in the domestic market.

In a bid to correct such anomalies, the government has already announced the setting of NATRIP, the National Automotive Testing and R&D Infrastructure Project, which envisages an investment of Rs 1,718 crore in setting up world-class automotive testing and homologation facilities in India.

The approval for two new homologation centres is being seen as a first step towards NATRIP’s endeavour to take automotive testing in India to global standards.

Also, under NATRIP, the government plans to establish world-class testing racks on 4,000 acres in Madhya Pradesh, a National Centre for Testing of Tractors and Off- Roads Vehicles, together with national facilities for accident data analysis and specialised driving training in Uttar Pradesh, a National Specialised Hill Area Driving Training Centre and a Regional In-Use Vehicle Management Centre at Silchar, Assam.