Ethanol fuels row in India

**Bisi Adebayo** (0:01)
India is pressing ahead with a new petrol blend, despite concerns from some motorists, as World Business Express from the BBC World Service, I am Bisi Adebayo. Also, Samsung's profits are soaring, so why are investors selling the shares? And can China do for self-driving cars what it did for electric vehicles?
So, the Indian government has ordered fuel companies to sell petrol made up of 20% of ethanol alcohol. Well, the move hasn't gone down well with many motorists.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:40)
Make a sensible policy that won't impact our vehicles and will benefit the nation. The profits are going to the ethanol distillers which are owned by the policy makers.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:52)
The ethanol blend is capped at 10% in most countries. India has implemented a 20% blend, and most Indian vehicles aren't compatible with the new fuel.

**Bisi Adebayo** (1:02)
And so why is India pressing ahead? I've been speaking to the BBC's South Asia business correspondence, Archana Shukla, in Derli.

**Archana Shukla** (1:09)
Government has been on a push to increase ethanol blending in petrol for two big reasons. One, India imports a lot of crude. And if we start mixing ethanol, which is locally produced, it reduces India's dependence on crude imports. And it also supports the agri-economy here in India. So there has been a sustained push to increase levels of ethanol in petrol. Till last year, E10, which is 10% ethanol in petrol, was the standard. Now it is 20 And many of the vehicles since 2023 are being manufactured that are compliant to ethanol blended petrol.

**Bisi Adebayo** (1:47)
Why are motorists then unhappy? What are they afraid of?

**Archana Shukla** (1:52)
The larger issue is with people who have vehicles that they bought before 2023, which are not compliant with ethanol blended petrol. Now, the biggest complaint that consumers have right now is a lack of choice. So people are saying that at least till last year, they could choose between E20 or 100% petrol, but now they don't have that choice.

**Bisi Adebayo** (2:12)
Is this move really about making the country less vulnerable to global shocks, including the recent tensions that were seen in the Middle East?

**Archana Shukla** (2:21)
India had already been pushing for higher ethanol blends to manage cost and also getting into cleaner fuel. But the Iran war and how the oil markets reacted with increased pricing and supply glitches, that really has added a fresh urgency to push for this. There are risks of relying heavily on imported energy. And we've seen this not just with India. We've seen Vietnam speeding up its plan for mandatory use of ethanol blended petrol. So there is a push by multiple countries and India towards flex fuel, because especially the Asian nations that heavily depend on imported crude, they are seeing this as one way to reduce that dependence.

**Bisi Adebayo** (3:01)
And so are the automakers saying it's actually safe?

**Archana Shukla** (3:04)
The car industry is saying that it is safe. But the concern that the consumers have is, if I have an older bike and my bike has a problem because of the ethanol blended petrol, will my insurance company pay me for that? And there are no answers to that as yet.

**Bisi Adebayo** (3:21)
Archana Shukla there. Now Samsung has delivered another quarter of record profits thanks to the booming demand for AI chips. But how important are they to Samsung's business? The BBC's Luke Wilson has more.

**Luke Wilson** (3:36)
Samsung is a South Korean conglomerate that's made up of lots of different businesses, everything from construction to life insurance to building ships. The biggest part of the business by far is Samsung Electronics. That's the part of the company you probably know. You might even have a Samsung mobile phone or a Samsung TV.
It also makes memory chips, and by sales, Samsung is the world's biggest memory chip maker. Now with the rapid growth of AI and the data centers behind it needing these chips, Samsung has benefited enormously. It's forecasting profits of more than $58 billion for just the second quarter of this year. That's more profit than it made in the entirety of 2025

**Bisi Adebayo** (4:24)
The BBC's Luke Wilson there. So Samsung is making more money than ever, but investors don't seem very impressed. Well, let's get the views of Fiona Sincota, Senior Market Analyst at StoneEx. Fiona, record profits, falling shares. Why isn't the market buying into Samsung's AI story?

**Fiona Sincott** (4:44)
Yeah, that's right. I mean, the results show that the sort of, you know, AI driven memory demand remains strong, but that share price reaction suggests that investors are actually nervous about demand for chips peaking as the sort of the industry plans aggressive expansion. And also investors are cautious about the sustainability of AI spending by large tech stocks. So that's really making the share price come down despite those strong numbers.