Largest tender for 8,000 electric state buses on cards

In a bid to accelerate the shift toward clean mobility in public transport systems, the government is looking at floating its largest ever tender for procuring nearly 8,000 electric buses for state transport undertakings (STUs).

Managing director of state-run Convergence Energy Services (CESL), which handled EV acquisition for central and state governments, Mahua Acharya told ET the scheme is based on an asset-light model that will enable STUs to deploy cleaner vehicles affordably and at scale. “We are looking at mobility as a service instead of outright procurement to enable STUs to swap their existing fleet with electric buses. Their balance sheet will remain light. Also, aggregation of demand will bring in scale and help realise lower prices,” said Acharya.

Even without incentives, aggregating demand on a gross cost contracting model from across states helped realise 27% and 23% lower rates for electric buses compared to diesel and CNG ones in the CESL tender.