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India gets its first self-service fuel station in Pune.

  • The initiative has been started by a Bharat Petroleum fuel station in Pune.
  • It reduces the physical interaction between customers and attendants at the petrol pump.
  • Customers can choose to refuel by cost, volume or even fill a full tank.

In view of the corona virus pandemic and social distancing becoming the new norm, it isn’t surprising to see self-service become the guiding rule in a lot of places. To take social distancing more seriously, a fuel pump in Pune has started a new self-service system under the Atmanirbhar campaign.

The Bharat Petroleum fuel pump located near the Regional Transport Office in Pune is the first fuel pump in India to offer this service. With the new system in place, the need of a fuel attendant is no longer necessary at the station.There are three ways a customer can fill up their vehicles. The first is to fill by volume where the customer has to enter the volume of fuel they wish to fill in litres. The second is by amount where a customer has to put in the amount of fuel he wishes to pay for. The third is a full tank of gas. Here the customer has to enter 500 litres and insert the nozzle into the fuel filler. As soon as the tank fills up, the nozzle will cut off automatically.

Using this system, the fuel station has effectively reduced the need of an attendants physical interaction. For the moment, there will be some need for attendants for education purposes, but if more such fuel stations pop up, attendants won’t be necessary at all.In addition to self-service, the Pune fuel pump also has other sanitisation measures in place to contain the spread of the corona virus.While India may have only got its first self-service fuel pump now, this system has been in place in countries like the US, the UK and Canada for a long time now.
Himanshu Johari
the authorHimanshu Johari