Intercity Electric Bus Service Started In Maharastra at Mumbai-Pune route
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Maharashtra gets first electric bus
“Shivaee/शिवाईE” for intercity services
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| Shivaee- Electric Bus having battery range of 300km (Image Credit: www.mid-day.com) |
Maharashtra Government and Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) always been interested to make Mumbai- Pune road route green. To fulfill the same at first stage MSRTC had floated tenders for 100 new electric buses to procured on a wet lease.
On the same move Maharashtra got its first fully electric bus on last Thursday. That electric air conditioned bus was launchd at the Mumbai Central ST bus depot on Thursday by the Shiv Sena Chief – Uddhav Thackeray.
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| Shivaee: The name of electric bus launched |
Specification of Shivaee:
Shivaee is a fully electric bus has the sitting capacity of 43 passenger on semi reclining seats. Complete length of bus is around 12 meters. This bus uses the Lithium-ion battery and can go upto 300 km at one charge. So, in a single charge only bus can reach from Mumbai to Pune and vice-versa. As usual like other electric vehicle this is also going to be a silently operating bus with very nominal motor and other power-train noise.
Bus Cost, Operation and Future Plans:
This electric bus is on wet lease and there is plan to bring such 150 buses on road which will be operated to connect different cities like intercity buses. Each bus costs between Rs 1.5 crore and Rs 2 crore. As per the term of wet lease these all buses will be owned and maintained by a third party but those all will be operated by MSRTC at no capital cost. Even though each bus is having battery range of 300 km which is enough to cover the distance between two cities but for emergency situation the charging point will be needed on the different highway routes. Charging points will also be installed by the bus contractor only.
Talking to the media, the state transport minister Diwakar Raote said– The fare for these electric buses is lesser than that of the Shivneri which charges around Rs 16 per kilometer. An official said the fare for these buses would be Rs 14 per kilometer.
My Words:
Maharastra is the first state to promote the EVs at this level. None of the sates intercity buses running on battery. MSRTC has planned it previously to take buses on wet lease and now its implementation phase. It will be interesting to see how does the future business grow and become profitable on the concept of wet leasing for electric buses. I appreciate this decision taken by MSRTC.
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