Govt All Set To Buy 50,000 Electric Buses For Mass Deployment Of Electric Mobility; Cost Will Come Down?

To give a boost to the usage of electric vehicles like electric buses amid its massive success, the government is now planning to put up multiple tenders for 50,000 buses in the upcoming year.

The demand for electric buses is on a catastrophic rise and the newly established subsidiary of state-owned Energy Efficiency Services Ltd, Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL) saw a mega tender of 5,450 electric buses in April 2022.

This kind of buses are profitable too, besides being eco-friendly, in the sense that the input costs of electric buses are 40% lower than diesel buses and 34% lesser than CNG buses.

“The prices that we realised were 57% lower than diesel and 49% lower than CNG for the buses with subsidy. But even without that, they were lower by 41 and 34%, which means it is self sustainable in a free market. That is the biggest takeaway for me,” said Mahua Acharya, the MD and CEO of CESL.

Govt to Deploy 50,000 Electric Buses in Future

Reports suggest that the government is planning to bring in multiple tenders for placing orders of 50,000 electric buses over the next year.

The famous CESL has state transport undertakings or STUs being incentivised and these are in the process of coming up with large orders for the government. The bigger the lot size, the lower is the price expectation, stated sources.

“The next step is to take it a few notches higher to a scale that is roughly 10 times the grand challenge. The government is looking at 50,000 buses being deployed over the next 5-7 years and this time it will not be restricted to just the top 5-7 cities but to smaller towns across the country,” stated Acharya.

For better understanding on the size of dependence on electric vehicles, around 30,000 buses were sold in India in the financial year 2021-22.