Kitna deti hai? Tall claims on fuel efficiency

Rahul Sharma had bought the Zen from Maruti in 2005. He claims that he was induced to make the purchase, by an advertisement that claimed the Zen had a fuel efficiency of 16.7 km/litre. But he found that he could never get more than10 km/litre from the vehicle.

Ashish K Mishra
Updated: Aug 31, 2012 12:45:51 PM UTC

Late last week, India’s largest car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki was directed by the New Delhi District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, to pay Rs 1 lakh to one of its customers. The owner of a Maruti Zen claimed that Maruti had ‘induced’ him to buy the car through false promises about the car’s fuel efficiency.

Rahul Sharma had bought the Zen from Maruti in 2005. He claims that he was induced to make the purchase, by an advertisement that claimed the Zen had a fuel efficiency of 16.7 km/litre. But he found that he could never get more than 10 km/litre from the vehicle. Let down by the Zen, he filed a claim for redress. Referring to his complaint, the Consumer Forum bench said, Maruti had “adopted the mileage (in the advertisement) to its advantage, without  corresponding clear information to consumers that this is not vouchsafed by Maruti itself.”

Personally, I am glad that Mr. Sharma was awarded compensation. But what really surprised me was the 16.7 km to a liter claim, is based on tests conducted by an auto magazine. Maruti's fuel efficiency claims are based on Autocar India's test drive of the Zen.  Benchmark fuel efficiency claims usually have to be endorsed by the venerable Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI). When and why did the ARAI cede this right to publications like Autocar?  Also, can automakers use the magazine figures in their promotion material?

Ashish-Mishra2

Maruti is not the only one in the industry doing this.

Ford India's latest campaign is pivoted around a fuel efficiency claim of 32 km/liter for its Fiesta. When I first saw the ad, I thought we'd finally found the solution to global warming. Then I looked the asterisk next to the claim. The fine print says the car gave 32 kms to a litre on a cross country drive by Autocar. This certainly looks like an engineering feat that should put every other car-maker to shame. I called veteran auto industry journalist Adil Jal Darukhanwala, editor of another auto publication Zigwheels, to understand if this was indeed a quantum leap in fuel efficiency. He was dismissive of the claims and said this is not real world stuff. “While Ford is struggling to sell that car, they are taking this fuel efficiency claim too seriously. What is the time it took to arrive at that figure? What happened in the road test? Was the air conditioner on or off? Somebody should drive this Fiesta in the real world condition and slam Ford,” he says.

Then I went to our in-house expert, Bertrand D Souza, who edits another auto publication Overdrive. I got two things out of our conversation. 1. Business is tough. 2. You can tailor a project to get whatever fuel efficiency claim you want (30, even 40), but that isn’t a standard and should not be projected as a standard. I checked with Ford India. They are officially yet to get back to me. But the conversation revolved around why ARAI figures too are not the best figures. “It is not real word stuff either.”

I wonder how long it will be before more consumers will follow Mr Sharma's example and file for compensation against tall claims.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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