Medilytix Bureau:
Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Thursday said that not just for personal mobility, the focus should also be on electrifying public transportation in India. “The drive towards electric mobility should not only be for personal mobility otherwise the issue of congestion will be aggravated and we’ll never be able to provide equitable access of transportation for our citizens. We should primarily focus on moving people and not moving vehicles which can only be achieved through public transportation,” he said while launching Convergence Energy Services Limited’s (CESL) tender for electric buses.
Earlier, CESL, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), announced the floating of a request for proposals for the biggest-ever demand for electric buses, under the ‘Grand Challenge’, a set of homogenised demand for electric buses aggregated across five major cities.
“Major automobile players like Ashok Leyland, Tata Motors JBM, etc. along with new players from South Korea will be taking part in the tender which could be between Rs 3500 to 5500 crore,” Kant said.
Automobile sector accounts for 49 per cent of manufacturing, 7.2 per cent of India’s GDP and generates 40 lakh jobs. India’s sales of vehicles will more than triple from 2.5 to 8 crores in 2030. “Presently India is only 20 cars per 1000 people compared to 800 in USA, thus, having immense growth potential in coming years. Vehicle growth cannot follow the approach which America or Europe has undertaken. Otherwise, India would require more than 4 planets to meet the vehicle demand. Cities of tomorrow need to embrace the concept of transit-oriented development where public transport is really the backbone and all urbanisation happens around public transport,” he added.