A month ago, I had spotted BMTC running trials using JBM’s Electric Bus fleet on Bannerghatta Road. In that post, I had also mentioned that BMTC had received bids from Veera, Ashok Leyland, and Olectra for trials of electric buses under the Centre’s FAME programme. Now while Olectra and JBM’s buses are popular across the country, the only city that used Ashok Leyland (AshLey) EVs was Chennai’s Metropolitan Transport Corproation (MTC). Launched by chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami in 2019, the buses are 9m long midi-buses and are completely air-conditioned.
Today, I spotted one of these buses on trials with the BMTC on Bannerghatta Road. Below id the image of the bus.
Ashok Leyland AC Electric Bus on Bannerghatta Road (Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia via Wikimedia Commons)
Ashok Leyland had tied up with Swiss-Swedish ABB Group to manufacture electric buses. I had interestingly, blogged about this back in October 2016; do read it here.
That’s all for the time being. This is really just an update, not more.
When you step out, please do take appropriate precautions.
For the last decade, Karnataka has been among the most proactive states in India when it came to acquiring new buses. The state was among the largest beneficiaries under the UPA government’s sham JnNURM and is continues to be so under the Modi sarkar’s FAME scheme for electric buses.
The second urban agglomeration in Karnataka, comprising the twin cities of Hubballi and Dharwad in the northern reaches of the state is the only city in the state with a functional bus rapid transit system (BRTS). The 22 km long HDBRTS connects the two cities and uses a fleet of 100 custom-built purple Chigari buses built by Volvo AB’s subsidiary UD Trucks. (I had posted a picture of a UD bus on trial with BMTC in my last post.)
On Thursday, 10 December, Kishan Rajput reporting for the Times of India tweeted out a picture of an Olectra eBuzz K9 belonging to the Pune Smart City Development Corporation Limited (PSCDCL) and operated by the PMPML with a notice that it was on trial with the Hubli Dharwad Company Limited.
While many cities make use of Olectra’s eBuzz series, PMPML’s fleet, consisting of both the the 9m long K7 and the 12m long K9 are all equipped with right-hand-side doors for use on a BRT system.
While I’m not sure about UD buses, Volvo AB sold its bus business in India to VE Commercial Vehicles, a joint venture between Volvo and Eicher. It seems that BYD and Olectra are here to stay. I’d like to see more Tata and Ashok Leyland buses though, the latter of which are running on the streets of Chennai.
Apart from this, Olectra will also supply 30 buses to Dehradun, 150 to Surat and another 25 to Silvassa. Let’s hope the EV fever reaches Hubli-Dharwad soon!
That’s all from me this time.
Featured image: Volvo UD Chigari Bus on the Hubli Dharwad BRTS (Hubli Dharwad Infra on Twitter)
While walking along Bannerghatta Road, I happened to spot a bus that seemed odd. At the first glance, it looked a lot like the Tata Starbus Hybrid Diesel-Electric bus that BEST operates in Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC). As the bus came closer, I noticed that it was not a Tata bus, but rather a JBM bus.
Here is the picture of the bus that I snapped.
JBM EcoLife Electric bus on trials with BMTC on Bannerghatta Road (Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia via Wikimedia Commons)
The bus is a JBM EcoLife Electric bus, bearing a green number plate with a Mathura (UP-85) registration, presumably because JBM has a bus manufacturing plant at Kosi Kalan, Mathura.
According to JBM’s page on the bus, the JBM Solaris EcoLife has two models, a 9m and 12m one. This is presumably the latter. Both have an 80-160 KW motor powered by a Lithium battery. It can be charged either with a plug-in mechanism or a pantograph. The bus features two inswing doors, one at the front and one in the centre, and features a manually operated wheelchair ramp.
This is the second time BMTC is trialing electric buses, the last one being the BYD Utopia in 2014. Cities in India are moving towards electric vehicles under the Modi Sarkar’s Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles in India (FAME India) scheme.
In 2015, BMTC had trialed a diesel-powered bus manufactured by Japan’s UD, a subsidiary of Sweden’s Volvo AB. Here is a snap of that too.
Volvo UD SLF on trials with BMTC (Srikanth Ramakrishnan/BESTpedia via Wikimedia Commons)
Coming back to electric buses, BMTC operated the BYD Utopia for about 4 months in 2014 but deferred purchasing it due to the high price tag of ₹2.5 crore attached to it. In October, The Hindureported that BMTC was receiving buses from Olectra, JBM and Ashok Leyland for trials. It also received bids from Veera Vahan Udyog. Veera is a Bangalore-based manufacturer of buses that has supplied a significant amount of BMTC’s Suvarna and JnNURM buses back in 2009. It has also been manufacturing three-door buses to take on the German Contrac Cobus 3000; some of these can be spotted at Kempegowda International Airport, operated by GlobeGround. Veera is also setting up a plant in Ananthapuramu (Anantapur), Andhra Pradesh to manufacture 3,000 electric buses a year. As reported by Bangalore Mirror, JBM is the lowest bidder to supply 90 buses.
Other cities that currently use JBM buses include Navi Mumbai. The Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport (NMMT) undertaking operates the blue-coloured 9m JBM EcoLife E9 bus, mostly along AC-105 from CBD Belapur to Bandra Railway Station (West).
