18,000 BS-III vehicles leftover with Mahindra

For the Indian auto industry, the last week of March 2017 was nothing more than a maddening race against time. The Supreme Court announced that the sale of non-BS-IV-compliant models will be banned after April 1st, 2017 and this meant that every single manufacturer, dealership and automaker had to sell any remaining stock in order to avoid serious losses. New reports tell us that Mahindra is still in possession of almost 18,000 BS-III vehicles, even now.

Mahindra has issued a statement about this matter to the Bombay Stock Exchange. "The company and industry have incurred a loss because of the heavily discounted sale that it had to do on March 30 and 31, 2017. The company may be able to export some of these vehicles which will not incur much of a cost; and convert some of these vehicles to BS-IV, which will have a cost of as little as ₹3,000-4,000 [on each] for some of the small commercial vehicles to as much as ₹200,000 [on each] for heavy commercial vehicles,” the statement to the BSE read. Also mentioned was the fact that some vehicles can neither be exported nor converted to BS-IV.

In an attempt to sell off stock, Mahindra had offered discounts of up to 15 percent. It even managed to clear inventory worth ₹2,000 crore before the ban was implicated. The company defended itself by saying, it assumed that the ban was on the production of BS-III compliant vehicles and that companies would be allowed sell any product made prior to that date. Mahindra was not the only company to face such a dilemma as most automakers scrambled last minute to avoid significant losses.