[dZired]

JBM Auto Ltd. have officially announced their Joint Venture with European bus manufacturer, Solaris Bus & Coach S.A. Under this JV, the companies will be manufacturing a range of electric buses named ECOLIFE. The company claims that the ECOLIFE will be India's first 100% electric bus. Solaris will be responsible for bringing in their proven domain strength in electric buses, while JBM Auto will provide development, engineering, and manufacturing solutions.

The JBM-Solaris JV would be investing Rs. 300 crore in the Indian market. This investment will be utilized for research and development, manufacturing processes, and other operational requirements for the JV's electric mobility project in the country.

The ECOLIFE buses made their Indian debut at this year's Auto Expo in February. Production of this new 100% electric bus will commence from Q4 of the 2016-17 fiscal, and it is expected to go on sale around April 2017.

The JBM-Solaris ECOLIFE is a Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) which gets its juice from a set of lithium batteries. The batteries support fast charging, and the bus can even run on plug-in charging mode. On a single full charge, the ECOLIFE electric bus is capable of covering a range of 200 km, enough for a daily city bus commute.





Link to Team-BHP News

[frostbite911]

Looks impressive!

But seeing the number of low floor Volvo city buses breaking down midway of their journeys, I am really keen to know how well they will be maintained over a long period of time.

[VeluM]

Originally Posted by frostbite911

Looks impressive!

But seeing the number of low floor Volvo city buses breaking down midway of their journeys, I am really keen to know how well they will be maintained over a long period of time.

These are all-electric, so there are far fewer mechanical components to break down. I'm sure they will be more reliable than the Volvos even if they are as poorly maintained as the Volvos and other ICE busses.

However, the 200km range is a bit of a concern. I'm quite sure the BMTC buses for example cover that much in a day, especially on the longer routes such as to the airport. One to and from Indira Nagar is close to a hundred.

Secondly, is this range with air conditioning? If it isn't, then the range will be far less in Indian conditions because even though time spent in traffic jams in an electric vehicle doesn't waste energy to idle an engine, it will continue to consume energy for the air conditioning. There is a lot of congestion in Bangalore and most of our cities, and India is a predominantly warm country.

The city and state transport departments will need to test these busses and plan routes with enough of a buffer to ensure that they don't run out of charge during peak traffic.