EESL floats second tender for acquiring 10,000 EVs

Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) has floated a second tender to procure an additional 10,000 electric vehicles as part of the government’s National e-Mobility Programme which was launched earlier this week.

Last year, the company had come out with a similar tender for 10,000 electric vehicles which was won by Tata Motors. The winning bid was also matched by Mahindra & Mahindra. So far, both companies have delivered around 500 such vehicles. These electric vehicles will be leased to government departments and various ministries to replace their existing fleet of petrol and diesel run vehicles.

According to an official statement by the Ministry of Power, 20,000 electric cars will help save over 5 crore litres of fuel every year and a reduction of 5.6 lakh tonne of annual carbon dioxide emissions.

“Electric vehicles makes sense from the point of view of both the environment and the economy. The future is electric. My message to the industry is to come and invest in manufacturing of e-vehicles and batteries,” said R K Singh, the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power and New & Renewable Energy on Wednesday while launching the National e-Mobility Programme. He added that the per kilometre cost for an electric vehicle is just Rs 0.85 as compared to Rs 6.5 for normal cars and the switch to electric will also help the country reduce expensive petroleum imports.

Giving more details about the targets that the new programme has set, Ajay Kumar Bhalla, secretary, Ministry of Power said that the by 2030, India aims that more than 30% of its vehicles would be powered by electricity. Officials at the launch of the programme also highlighted that there would be no need for a license to establish charging infrastructure in the country and the tariff for charging stations would be less than Rs 6 per unit (kilowatt hour).

EESL, a joint venture of PSUs under the Ministry of Power, will be implementing the National e-Mobility Programme. It plans to aggregate demand for electric vehicles by procuring them in bulk to get economies of scale.

In a recent interview to Fortune India, EESL’s managing director Saurabh Kumar had also said that the company will also be working towards setting up charging stations. It has already come out with a tender to procure equipment for 2,000 charging points for electric vehicles.

“We already have in place charging infrastructure at 150 government offices which will be able to charge 500 cars at a time,” Kumar said at the launch of the programme. He also mentioned that EESL has entered into memorandum of agreement with Andhra Pradesh to supply 10,000 electric cars and 4,000 charging points. A similar MoU with Gujarat is also in the pipeline, Kumar added.

(Find a detailed version story on Energy Efficiency Services Ltd and its role in India’s electric mobility programme in our March issue. Subscribe)