New motorbikes falling short of Euro-4 emission standards will be denied a license plate and banned from the streets as of March 21, 2019, the director of Tehran Air Quality Control Company said.
"The deadline for upgrading to Euro-4 standards is the end of the current Iranian year and from then on, the manufacturers will only be selling Euro-4 motorcycles. No new number plates will be issued for Euro-3 products beyond that date," Vahid Hosseini said on Sunday, according to the website of the Department of Environment.
Under a government directive issued in 2014, Iranian motorbike makers were required to renovate their factories by March 2018 so as to become able to produce bikes in compliance with Euro4 emission standards instead of the currently enforced Euro3. That deadline was missed and the manufacturers were given a further ten months.
The extra time was granted at the request of the Industries Ministries on the ground that the standard had only been enforced in the European Union recently and was not applied in Asia which is Iran's main supplier of motorbike parts.
Desirable Development
However, Hosseini, who was visiting a manufacturing site near Tehran, described the developments of emission-reduction technology as desirable.
The government has also banned the production of carburetor-equipped motorbikes to replace them with fuel-injection ones.
Some 2.5 million carbureted motorcycles ply Tehran's almost permanently clogged roads, each producing an amount of fumes equivalent to what is emitted from eight vehicles with Euro-3 standards. Hosseini said the carburetor-equipped products stocked by some manufacturers should not be allowed to find their way to the market.
"Unfortunately, some companies still have an inventory of carbureted motorbikes that must not enter the domestic market because they do not help reduce the air pollution."
He said the DOE and Tehran Municipality favor electric motorbikes, but the manufacturers have yet to come up with a model fit for use in metropolises.
"Both the government and the municipality are ready to support high-quality electric products."
Earlier this month, the latter announced it would offer incentives for purchasing electric motorbikes.
"The municipality is developing a scheme to replace gasoline-powered motorbikes with electric two-wheelers. Loans at low or zero interest rates are to be offered to at least 2,000 people in the initial phase," Deputy Tehran Mayor Mohsen Pourseyed Aqaei said.
