Overview
- The Road Transport Ministry on October 26 updated vehicle rules to allow certification of flex-fuel models that can run on blends up to E100, or nearly pure ethanol.
- The Supreme Court on Thursday pressed the Centre during ESY 2025-26 hearings to explain how fuel volumes for E100 vehicles would be ensured.
- Attorney General R. Venkataramani told the court that supplying E100 at scale would need large-scale manufacturing rearrangements in fuel production and distribution.
- The regulatory change sits alongside a legal dispute over ethanol allocation, with the court having ordered status quo on a Karnataka High Court direction that pressed oil firms to give preferential offtake to dedicated ethanol plants.
- Widespread E100 use would require new distillation, storage and retail infrastructure and could shift feedstock demand toward crops like sugarcane, raising questions for farmers, emissions and future hearings set for next month.