E-Paper
The E20 debate is asking the wrong question
This article is authored by Maulik Shah, founder and managing director, Aditya Engimach.
For weeks, one question has dominated conversations at petrol pumps, in WhatsApp groups and across social media: Does E20 petrol damage your engine?
A recent study by researchers at IIT Kanpur, supported by auto experts, offered a clear answer: E20 does not harm vehicle engines. Yet the debate has refused to settle. That is because the country has spent weeks arguing about the wrong thing. People think 20% ethanol means their engine is suddenly running on a different fuel, in reality it's a blend, and the real issue isn't safety, it's compatibility.
My first thought was practical, not political. As a manufacturer, any big shift in fuel specs affects millions of engines already on the road. I wanted to see the transition data before forming a view, not just the announcement.
E20 refers to petrol blended with 20% ethanol, up from the 10% blend that came before it. Higher ethanol blending sits at the centre of India's energy strategy for good reason. The country imports the overwhelming majority of the crude oil it consumes, and every percentage point of ethanol blended into the national fuel supply is a percentage point less dependent on volatile global oil markets, while also supporting farm incomes through domestic ethanol production and lowering vehicle emissions.
On the direction of the policy, the intent is sound. What has gone wrong lies elsewhere. Ethanol behaves differently from petrol. It carries less energy by volume, which can mean a marginal change in fuel efficiency, and it interacts differently with certain older fuel-system materials. Vehicles engineered with these properties in mind handle the blend without issue. Those built before the shift was anticipated were simply never designed for it. Pre-2023 vehicles weren't engineered for it, and that's where the friction is, not in the fuel itself. Newer engines, built to be E20-compatible, run on the blend without trouble. The problem was never the science of the fuel. It was the millions of older vehicles that arrived at the pump unprepared for it, and a rollout that did not adequately plan for them.
Any large-scale industrial or fuel transition needs a grace window for legacy assets. That's basic engineering discipline. The proposed fix is refreshingly simple: A parallel lower-ethanol option at select pumps for older vehicles, even for a limited period, would have removed most of the friction the country is now experiencing.
The principle has little to do with fuel policy specifically and everything to do with how transitions are managed anywhere. In a well-run factory, you do not switch an entire system overnight and leave older equipment stranded. You plan for the assets already in service, you sequence the change, and you give the parts of the operation that need time, time. The E20 rollout through exactly that lens, and find the absence of a runway, not the presence of ethanol, at the root of the public backlash.
The consequences extend well past the individual driver filling a tank. Any transition executed too fast, without enough runway for adjoining industries, auto components, insurance, servicing, creates short-term shocks.
As a supplier embedded deep in the automotive value chain, I feel those shocks indirectly. When vehicle owners hesitate and manufacturers wait for clarity, that uncertainty travels down the chain to the component makers who serve them. We feel that through customer uncertainty in the auto supply chain. A policy announced in Delhi, in other words, eventually reaches a forging floor in Rajkot, not through the fuel, but through the hesitation it creates in everyone downstream.
Lower crude dependence is good for national energy security and long-term that's positive for input-cost stability in manufacturing. For a business where energy and fuel costs are a constant and rising pressure, anything that reduces the country's exposure to global oil-price swings is, in principle, welcome.
Direction is rarely the problem, pace is. It is the line that captures his entire position. Give industry and consumers a realistic transition timeline with clear data, and adoption takes care of itself. Force it overnight, and you spend more energy managing backlash than managing the transition.
It is advice that reaches well beyond fuel. Any leader who has tried to push a major change through an organisation recognises the truth in it, that the resistance a change meets is often less about the change itself and more about how much warning people were given, and how clearly. E20 is a national-scale case study in precisely that.
The researchers may well be right that E20 is safe for engines. But safety was never really the question. The real question was whether a country of millions of vehicles, drivers and dependent industries was given enough time and clarity to come along for the change.
Get that part right and the next big transition India attempts, whatever it turns out to be, will meet far less friction than this one did.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Maulik Shah, founder and managing director, Aditya Engimach.
