The central government has sanctioned the use of 5,595 electric buses in 64 cities for intracity and intercity public transportation under the FAME II (Faster Adoption and Manufacture of (Hybrid and) Electric Vehicles) scheme in India. The Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises had invited expression of interest (EoI) from cities with a population in excess of one million; smart cities, states or Union Territory capitals, as well as special category states for submission of the proposal for deployment of electric buses on an operational cost basis. The ministry received about 86 proposals from 26 states and union territories for the deployment of 14,988 electric buses.
After the evaluation of these proposals as per EoI, on the advice of Project Implementation and Sanctioning Committee (PISC), the government-sanctioned 5,095 electric buses to 64 cities or state transport corporations for intra-city operation, 400 electric buses for intercity operation and 100 electric buses for last-mile connectivity to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).
A number of cities are already plying electric buses for transportation including Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata
Some of the cities that will get the sanctioned electric buses include Visakhapatnam, Amravati, Guwahati, Patna, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Gurugram, Shimla, Kozikode, Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Agra, Lucknow, among others. Maharashtra gets the highest allocation with 725 buses across six cities, followed by Uttar Pradesh that gets 600 e-buses across 11 cities. Uttarakhand gets the smallest allocation with 30 electric buses sanctioned for Dehradun.
Each of the selected city or STUs (state transport undertaking) is now required to initiate the procurement process in a time-bound manner for the deployment of sanctioned electric buses on an operational cost basis, an official release from the ministry said. As per EoI, buses which satisfy required localisation level and technical eligibility under FAME II scheme will be eligible for the funding.
The buses are expected to run about four billion km during the contract period and are expected to save 1.2 billion litres of fuel during the process. This, in turn, will reduce CO2 emissions by 2.6 million tonne, according to the ministry.
