India's first all-electric cab services 'Blu-Smart' has been launched in Delhi-NCR. Gensol Mobility, part of the Gensol group, is the company behind Blu-Smart and has inducted only electric vehicles are part of its fleet for the national capital region. The service aims to provide a smart urban electric mobility option for consumers, according to the company. The new service comes as air pollution has been on alarming levels in Delhi, while the central government has been promoting electric vehicles for its employees and personnel. The company will be using Mahindra e-Verito cars as its electric cabs in Delhi-NCR and has partnered with Mahindra & Mahindra.
Recently the Honda Jazz EV was spotted testing in India, for the first time, in its undisguised avatar with all the badging. While the car could be here simply for R&D purpose, but this does beg the question, is Honda planning to join the bandwagon of carmakers gearing up to launch electric cars?
The Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance has signed an agreement with Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) for the deployment of 15 electric vehicles for their officers. The electric cars handed over by EESL to the Finance Ministry include the Mahindra e-Veritos. EESL also sources the Tata Tigor EVs that that are used in the government fleet. In addition to the 15 electric vehicles, the government also set-up 28 electric vehicle charging points that include 24 slow charging points and four fast charging points at the North Block. With 15 EVs in its fleet, the government said that the Department of Economic Affairs is expected to save 36,000 litres of fuel every year, and will reduce over 440 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
Chinese-funded electric vehicle manufacturer Byton is seeking to raise at least $500 million to finance growth, valuing the nearly three-year-old company at more than $4 billion, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The latest round of fundraising comes as China's government promotes new energy vehicles (NEVs), a category comprising battery-powered and plug-in battery-petrol hybrid cars, to help reduce air pollution and support high technology development. Byton is keen to primarily attract foreign investors in its latest fundraising and the proceeds will be mainly used to finance the mass production of its first premium electric SUV vehicle - Byton M-Byte and research and development, one of the sources said on condition of anonymity as discussions are still private.
2018 hasn't been a cakewalk for Tesla and the Electric carmaker has had its share of challenges in the previous year. For instance, the deliveries of Tesla Model 3 were delayed due to sluggish production and the company has also been penalised by SEC over the infamous tweets of its CEO- Elon Musk about taking Tesla private and both Musk and Tesla will have to pay $ 20 million. Despite legal and financial hurdles, Tesla is afoot to become America's number-one premium automotive company as it has sold more units than most of the other premium carmakers in the States like Lexus, Infiniti and Acura. However, the electric carmaker is still few thousand units behind of Mercedes-Benz and BMW.
Toyota has possibly one of the widest range of Hybrid cars available on the market today and for the longest time, Toyota management has stuck to its guns saying it's buyers and dealers do not need an electric car and are happier with hybrid tech. That said, with the world moving swiftly towards electric mobility, the automaker does need to make its presence felt. And with most automakers, Toyota might be looking at a top down approach. Lexus, the luxury arm of the Toyota Group has recently filed a patent for the name 'UX300e' hinting at the first ever all-electric model from the carmaker.
