The Central government is eyeing to turn a significant part of over 60 lakh three-wheelers in the country into electric vehicles (EVs).
The government’s move is part of its ambitious target of converting 30 per cent of all wheels on roads into electric by 2030.
In this regard, the state-run Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL) has released a tender worth Rs 3000 crore to purchase around one lakh electric three-wheelers to deploy them for various purposes such as freight loading, disposal of garbage, transport of food and vaccine, passenger services etc.
Around 20 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) participated in the pre-bid conference.
Mahua Acharya, MD and CEO of CESL, was quoted by The Economic Times as saying, “Before floating the tender, we launched a public exercise for demand aggregation. So we got commitments from financiers, fleet aggregators and others such as states that have funds under Swatch Bharat Mission, for about 85,000 (three-wheelers).”
“And so we kept a margin of an additional 15,000 and floated a tender to buy 1 lakh electric three-wheelers,” Acharya added.
A large part of the tender is concerned around demand for vehicles that will be put into use to supply vaccines and subsequently provide employment.
According to the report, the demand for electric three-wheelers is mainly coming from cities that want to transform their garbage collection fleet from fossil fuel to electric power. They are also willing to introduce a new green fleet that has cheaper operational costs too.