Team-BHP - Govt. sanctions 5,595 electric buses under Fame-II
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The government of India has approved the sanction of 5,595 electric buses to 64 cities, state government entities and state transport undertakings for intra-city and intercity operations under Fame-II.

Govt. sanctions 5,595 electric buses under Fame-II-olectrabyd.jpg

Earlier, the Department of Heavy Industry had invited proposals from cities with a population of over 10 lakh, smart cities, state/UT capitals and cities from special category states.

The government had received 86 proposals from 26 states / UTs for 14,988 electric buses. Out of these the government has sanctioned 5,095 e-buses to 64 cities / state transport corporations for intra-city operations. Additionally, 400 e-buses for intercity operations and 100 for last mile connectivity to the Delhi Metro have also been sanctioned.

Under the government's scheme, these electric buses will be run on an operational cost basis. The buses are expected to cover a distance of 4 billion kilometers during their contract period. It is expected to save about 1.2 billion litres of fuel and avoid 2.6 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Link to Team-BHP News

Will Byd and other leading players garner a lion's share of this business with Indian commercial vehicle majors not even playing catch-up? :confused:

I think that the authorities have become very much optimistic about the premature, grand success of EV induction with no requisite infrastructure, no EV policy and non availiability of the many appendages that need to be availiable to make EV plying viable. Last year, at around this time it was announced that the Central government departments will only go for new EV's and not for ICE's henceforth. This was not favoured by the Babus , who used their time tested tactics to ground the proposal.

The nearly 5,600 electric new buses, let us hope do not get grounded sooner or later, as has happened with the launch of 200 Mahindra E2O taxis by Ola, during June 2017, with the backing of the Ministry of Transport at Nagpur. These have lately started going off the road since March 2018.

The failure of Scania ethanol-powered buses at Nagpur is also fresh in public memory. The Scania bus project commenced in the Q 3 of 2014 and these buses, made huge losses for the operators from Day 1 and were finally taken off the road by August 2018 and their production was stopped in Karnataka. These two projects were supposed to be on a pilot basis for India, but have bombed.

The E2O saga:-

https://www.thenewsminute.com/articl...vehicles-77782

The Scania ethanol bus example:-

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/64593291.cms

I sincerely hope they have taken the route distance and distance per charge into consideration with sufficient buffer for additional discharge due to overloading / over crowding.

Any idea on the range of these buses ?

Read from an article that the setup of charging infrastructure at the base location and intermediate location (s) is the responsibility of the bidder. Hopefully the bus has enough juice to return to the base location because of these factors.

If the likes of Mahindra, Tata and Ashok Leyland miss out on this wave and BYD benefits massively, it will be another case of short-sighted planning and lack of game-changing vision at Indian automakers.

Remember, this is the same company that made fake cars, copying pretty much every global brand shamelessly, and not too many years back. It wasn't just BYD either. Below is the Land 'Wind' X7. It's almost like the Chinese were mocking both Jaguar and BMW.

Govt. sanctions 5,595 electric buses under Fame-II-x7landwindpics001.jpg

I remember lots of green fuel and electric models from domestic players at auto shows. Were those just showroom pieces that had too little range/high cost?

All this talk on Eco Friendliness of Electric vehicles is just plain non-sense in this current scenario. I will go with the figures mentioned in this article and other publicly available documents to substantiate.
As the article mentions, the running kms expected is 4 billion. And the present E bus typically consumes 1.2 kwh/km. This translates to 4.8 billion kwH of electricity to power these buses. A typical coal fired power plant generates 0.82 kg/kwh of CO2. And remember Coal fired power plants are the backbone of our power map contributing roughly 70% of the total power generated in India. Renewables are still a minor player but are picking up considerably.
Do the math and you can find out roughly 4 million tonnes of CO2 is generated, while as the article mentions, you just pollute only 2.6 million tonnes of CO2 if you run the diesel buses.
So effectively, we are polluting the environment by an extra 1.4 miilion tonnes of CO2 :eek: by going Electric !!!
I feel the best time to introduce E vehicles particularly in India is when Renewable power is more than 50% of total power produced and when the batteries are super efficient and when rechargeable batteries are manufactured domestically. All the more, presently it is not a level playing field for Indian bus manufacturers.

Part of this project was about 400 buses for Karnataka. But the interest seems feeble. Only 1 vendor has bid for it, and neither Tata nor Leyland nor Volvo is that. The tender for Karnataka is going to put up afresh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarath_MoJa (Post 4637772)
All this talk on Eco Friendliness of Electric vehicles is just plain non-sense in this current scenario.

So effectively, we are polluting the environment by an extra 1.4 miilion tonnes of CO2 :eek: by going Electric !!!

Not disputing your facts at all. But you would agree, future potential for Electric Vehicles is bright and we would get there in a couple of years for sure.

These small experiments by induction of few thousand buses will enable bus drivers, the state undertakings, their staff including maintenance staff, management staff get a first hand experience of this technology, get acquainted with the nuances, differences with existing diesel technology and enable them to manage the transition to electric smoothly when large scale adoption happens.

Just a different perspective.


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