Toyota Service Center Denied Warranty For My E20 Damaged Innova HyCross, Claims Bihar’s Biggest Youtuber

The video in which the entire issue with the Toyota Innova Hycross hybrid has been shared on YouTube by Manish Kashyap on his channel. It starts off with the vlogger mentioning that he has come to the Toyota dealership with his newly bought Innova Hycross hybrid MPV after driving just 12,000 km. He adds that the last service was done at 10,000 km, and he now had to come again for service because his vehicle was having a lot of problems.

Soon after this, he mentions that the person standing next to him is the chief technician at this particular Toyota dealership, and he can be seen standing with a bottle filled with E20 petrol. He claims that currently there is 40 percent ethanol in the fuel, after which he also emphasizes that there is debris in the fuel as well. In the video, we can note that the petrol and ethanol have separated in the bottle.

For those who may not be aware, this is called phase separation. As ethanol is hygroscopic in nature, it gets mixed with the water present in the air or in the fuel tank or any container in which it has been kept, and this causes major issues in vehicles. Soon after this, the YouTuber asks the technician if this ethanol can be added by the customer or if it is only available at fuel pumps.

To this, the chief technician replies that it is not possible for a vehicle owner to add extra ethanol into the fuel tank. This means that the only source for ethanol to enter the vehicle is via the refilling of petrol done at fuel stations. The owner then asks the Toyota service centre technician to bring down the fuel tank of the vehicle.

In the video, the owner of the vehicle then comes up with a theory of why there is 40 percent ethanol in the fuel instead of 20 percent. He claims that the vehicle is incapable of fully consuming the ethanol mixed in E20 petrol.

As an example, he mentions that if the vehicle is consuming 15 percent of ethanol from E20 petrol, the remaining 5 percent ethanol remains in the tank. This residual ethanol then gets mixed with new fuel, increasing the overall ethanol content of the fuel. After a few tanks, the residual ethanol level goes up to 40 percent as seen in the plastic bottle shown in the video.

Moving ahead, the owner then asks the chief technician if his vehicle is the only vehicle that is suffering from this issue. To this, the technician mentions that they are facing this issue with all other petrol vehicles in the Toyota line-up. These include the Urban Cruiser Hyryder, Taisor, Glanza, and others.

The vlogger then explains that the fuel tank of the vehicle will now get removed. Also, the fuel lines, high-pressure and low-pressure fuel pumps will also get removed, and they will be cleaned. He adds that the cost of this service will not be covered by Toyota, which added to the frustration of the Innova Hycross owner.

In the video, he questions that he paid Rs 40 lakh for the vehicle, out of which Rs 18 lakh was just the tax component that was taken by the government. After this, he mentions that he also paid extra for the extended warranty till 2 lakh km. And now, after his vehicle has developed issues due to the only available petrol pumps that have been mandated by the government, he will also be required to pay for the repair.

He directly blames Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, for this issue. The owner gets extremely frustrated as he claims that none of this was his fault and he is now expected to pay for an issue that he did not cause.

He adds that he bought the hybrid version of the Innova Hycross, which costs Rs 5 lakh more than the standard model. He did this to make sure that it was an environmentally friendly decision. However, he is now expected to suffer because of the mandate to use E20 petrol.

Now we would like to discuss a bit about what is actually true in the video. The theory mentioned by the vehicle owner, that ethanol keeps getting left behind in the fuel tank and slowly builds up from 20 percent to 40 percent, is not technically correct. In most modern cars, the low-pressure fuel pump sits at the bottom of the fuel tank and remains submerged in the fuel.

This means it uses both petrol and ethanol together. So, under normal conditions, the fuel inside the tank keeps moving while driving, braking, and turning, so petrol and ethanol remain mixed. Because of this, ethanol should not accumulate inside the tank the way it is explained in the video.

However, phase separation is a real phenomenon, and it can happen under certain conditions. We all know that ethanol naturally absorbs water because it is hygroscopic in nature, as mentioned above. So, if water enters the fuel through any source or if the fuel is unused for a long period, the ethanol can separate from the petrol and settle at the bottom along with the absorbed water.

So, in such a situation, the fuel pump could initially use this ethanol-water mixture first. And this can cause poor performance, lower mileage, and fuel system issues. At the same time, the claims made in the video about fuel containing nearly 40 percent ethanol have also not been independently verified.

If E20 petrol is actually being supplied with much higher ethanol content, it would point to a very serious issue at the fuel supply level, which is highly unlikely. A bigger possibility is water contamination at some stage of fuel storage or dispensing, which can trigger phase separation.

However, what’s interesting is that the Toyota technician in the video also claims that similar complaints are being seen in other Toyota petrol models. And many vehicle owners have reported noticeable drops in fuel efficiency after the introduction of E20 petrol. However, the exact reason behind these complaints cannot be confirmed based on this particular video.