What India's BS7 draft changes: brake dust, tyre wear, battery health and real-world tests

The short answer: BS7 is the next Indian emission stage, proposed to start with new passenger cars from 1 April 2029, and it moves the rulebook past the exhaust pipe. The draft adds limits on brake particles, a tyre abrasion requirement, a minimum battery health for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, tighter real-world testing, and on-board monitoring that can report itself over the air. It is still a draft, out for 30 days of public comment, so the numbers can move.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways issued the drafts in mid-October 2026 as amendments to Rule 115 of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989. DieselNet lists the commercial vehicle notifications as G.S.R. 881 and G.S.R. 882 of 15 October 2026 and says the standards are consistent with Euro 7, including the move to counting particles down to 10 nanometres. Autocar India reports the same change for cars, with the particle counting threshold dropping from 23 nanometres to 10 nanometres, which catches finer soot that today's test ignores.

The tailpipe part, and the parts that are new

For cars, Forbes India reports the draft limits from April 2029 as 60 mg/km NOx for petrol and 80 mg/km for diesel, 4.5 mg/km particulate matter, and 1,000 mg/km carbon monoxide for petrol. The conformity factor, which is the allowance a car gets on the road compared with the lab, tightens to 1.0 from 1.43 for NOx and 1.5 for particle number under BS6. On-road testing with portable equipment starts from April 2030.

Brake dust is the genuinely new bit. From April 2031 the draft sets a PM10 brake particle limit of 3 mg/km for pure electric cars and 7 mg/km for petrol, diesel, hybrid and fuel cell cars, with a single 3 mg/km figure for everything from April 2035. Tyre abrasion requirements for C1 passenger car tyres also begin in 2031, with the actual limits to be notified separately. Electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles must hold at least 75 percent of original battery performance to five years or 100,000 km and 67 percent to eight years or 160,000 km, whichever comes first.

Why it looks like Euro 7

Because it is built on the same plumbing. The European Parliament's own announcement of the Euro 7 deal set brake PM10 limits of 3 mg/km for pure electric cars and vans, 7 mg/km for combustion, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles and 11 mg/km for large combustion vans, measured alongside particles at the PN10 level, with battery durability of 80 percent to five years or 100,000 km and 72 percent to eight years or 160,000 km. Cars and vans come under it 30 months after entry into force, heavy vehicles at 48 months.

The measurement method is not European either, it is a UN one. Brake emissions under Euro 7 are measured to UN Global Technical Regulation No. 24, which runs a brake on a dynamometer through a standard cycle and samples PM and particle number, as test equipment maker HORIBA describes. That is how a European rule reaches an Indian showroom: the test procedure is agreed at UN level, India writes its own limits and dates around it, and the supplier validating a brake pad or a filter uses the same bench either way.

For owners, nothing changes on a BS6.2 Swift or Nexon bought today. What changes is from 2029 onwards: low metallic brake pads, tyres chosen partly for wear rate, and a car that keeps an emissions log. PSU Watch reports the draft wants on-board monitoring able to detect emissions at least 2.5 times the limit, with fuel and energy consumption data accessible from April 2030 and monitoring data, including over-the-air transmission, from April 2032. That last part is software work, and a fair amount of it will be written in Bengaluru.

Sources

• Euro 7: Deal on new EU rules to reduce road transport emissions, European Parliament
• India releases draft BS-VII emission standards for commercial vehicles, DieselNet
• India proposes phased rollout of stricter BS7 vehicle emissions rules from 2029, Forbes India
• Govt proposes BS-VII emission norms from April 2029, PSU Watch
• BS7 emission norms rollout proposed from April 2029, Autocar India
• Non-exhaust emissions testing, HORIBA