Tata Motors wins largest govt e-bus tender worth Rs 5,000 cr

The tender notification was issued by the Ministry of Heavy Industries on June 11, 2021. The tender was opened on Tuesday, April 26, 2022.

"The rates seen in this tender are the lowest ever – with Tata Motors coming across as the least cost bidder across all five categories of electric buses contained in the tender," the Ministry of Heavy Industries said in a statement.

Discovered prices are between 15 percent and 48 percent lower than the lowest price discovered by the cities.

The tender is worth Rs 5,000 crore, ET reported.

At these rates, electric buses become extremely affordable across the country the ministry said.

The tender contains the largest ever aggregation of electric buses – 5450 buses across five major cities that have indicated their demand for electric buses.

The participating cities are Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Surat.

The tender has been managed by Convergence Energy Services Limited, as per remodeled FAME Scheme.

"The scheme allows state agencies to purchase mobility as a service – where operators are paid a fixed price denominated as rupees per kilometer over a period of time," the Ministry said.

This public-private model has emerged as a way for cities to introduce or scale electric bus services.

With a burgeoning demand for mobility, this model holds the potential to serve as a solution to cover the investment needs of the bus sector and ramp up bus services, it noted.

Other bidders in the race were Switch Mobility (the electric vehicle arm of Ashok Leyland), Evey Trans of the Olectra Group and VECV (a joint venture between Volvo Group and Eicher Motors) for the tender under Centre’s FAME II scheme, according to the sources according to the ET report.

The bidding was held in five categories – 12 meter low floor AC and non AC e-buses, 12 meter Standard floor non-AC and 9 meter standard floor AC and non-AC.