As many as 10 companies including four vehicle makers and half a dozen operators and aggregators bid for the tender for 4,588 buses, pegged at INR 8,000 crore, said people with knowledge of the matter.Adani Enterprises, EKA Mobility, JBM Ecolife, Greencell Mobility and Chartered Speed are among the frontrunners in the latest tender floated by state-run Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL) for supplying, operating and maintaining electric buses under the Pradhan Mantri e-Bus Sewa Scheme.
As many as 10 companies including four vehicle makers and half a dozen operators and aggregators bid for the tender for 4,588 buses, pegged at INR 8,000 crore, said people with knowledge of the matter.
The tender is the first of several scheduled to be floated by the government to deploy 10,000 electric buses under the PM e-Bus Sewa Scheme and support their operations over the coming decade. The total cost of the scheme is estimated at INR 57,613 crore.
The bids were opened on Thursday and will be awarded after due evaluation, said a senior official. "Financial bids have opened this week. They are being assessed," the official told ET.
EKA, Greencell, JBM, Switch Mobility, Chartered Speed and PMI Electro Mobility didn't respond to queries.
While Pune-based EKA Mobility participated in the tender for supplying electric buses to Andhra Pradesh directly, the remaining automakers--Delhi-based JBM, Hinduja Group-promoted Switch Mobility, and Hyderabad-based Olectra--participated through subsidiaries and associates. The rest of the bidders for the tender included operators and aggregators such as Greencell Mobility and Chartered Speed. Pinnacle Mobility, part of EKA Mobility, is learnt to have cornered the lion's share as it made the Andhra Pradesh bids directly. A consortium of Chartered Speed, an Ahmedabad-based bus operator, and EKA bid for the Ladakh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Meghalaya, Jammu & Kashmir, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh tenders. EKA is also understood to have entered into an agreement with Greencell Mobility, a Mumbai-based bus operator, for the supply of buses to Bihar and Pondicherry.
As per initial assessments, EKA with bids for 2,450 e-buses is likely to emerge as the largest supplier, accounting for a 53% share of the total, followed by JBM at 1,200 and VE Commercial Vehicles at 475. VECV, a joint venture between the Volvo Group and Eicher Motors, is the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partner of Greencel. PMI, the OEM partner of Intact, bid for Uttaranchal's 110 buses. Adani Enterprises bid for the supply of 350 electric buses, without specifying an OEM partner. In a previous bid by Adani in February last year, it had partnered with EKA Mobility. "The Centre is keen that public transport systems go all-electric and is providing incentives to state governments to set up the supporting infrastructure for successful deployment on electric buses for operating within cities," said one of the persons cited above, adding:"This involves setting up of transmission lines, civil infrastructure at depots."
PM e-Bus is supplemented by a Payment Security Mechanism (PSM) scheme to mitigate risks faced by companies over the procurement and operation of e-buses by public transport authorities (PTAs) with an outlay of INR 3,435.33 crore. The mechanism was set up in September last year to ensure timely payments to OEMs and operators through a dedicated fund in case of payment defaults by PTAs.
