Delhi-NCR Gets Its First Electric Vehicle Taxi Service That Kicks Off With A 70 Car Fleet
Blu-Smart has appointed around 70 cars for kick-starting the service with an aim to increase the fleet to 400 by the end of March this year. The company is in talks with several car companies including Tata Motors Mahindra &Mahindra and Nissan for procuring EVs. In addition it claims to have invested over Rs 50 crore to set up the required charging infrastructure in various parts of the city.
Delhi-NCR's very first electric vehicle (EV) taxi service has kicked off, with Gensol Mobility launching its Blu-Smart initiative in the Delhi-NCR region. A new frontier in the EV adoption, Blu-Smart has appointed around 70 cars for kick-starting the service, with an aim to increase the fleet to 400 by the end of March this year.
The company is in talks with several car companies including Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra and Nissan for procuring EVs. In addition, it claims to have invested over Rs 50 crore to set up the required charging infrastructure in various parts of the city.
As per a statement, the company claims to be a ¡°green alternative¡± to the existing players like Ola and Uber and its expansion plans will be fuelled by USD 10 million (Rs 70.92 crore) investment by its promoters.
Representative Image (Comyan)
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As of now, Blu-Smart has 70 Mahindra Verito EVs in its fleet, with ongoing negotiations with Tata Motors (for Tigor EV), Mahindra for more offerings and also with Nissan for the Nissan Leaf.
Initiating with web-bookings, the company aims to put its app in place within the week. Charges specified by Blu-Smart range from Rs 14 to Rs 16 per km for compact sedans (eVeritos), while it says that it won¡¯t charge a surge pricing during peak hours.
Mahindra E-Verito (Comyan)
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The Rs 50 crore investment is aimed to help set up 65 stations across the NCR, with each having up to 20 charging points. Blu-Smart claims to have already set up 18 such charging stations.
Earlier, a similar initiative was announced by Mahindra Electric Mobility Ltd. and SmartE as the companies signed an MoU to bring 1000 electric three wheelers in the Delhi-NCR region in the form of Mahindra Treo and Mahindra Treo Yaari by March this year. The final count is supposed to reach 10,000 of such vehicles by 2020, boosting the electric mobility for the last-connectivity in the region.
Such EV taxi services can bring around a huge boost to India¡¯s EV adoption. While private vehicles will contribute to a shift towards EVs singularly, deploying a fleet of such vehicles at once for mobility solutions can act as a leap instead. While the service is exclusive to Blu-Smart for now, the idea can easily be adopted by the major ride-hailing services for a greener transport scenario within the country. To note, Ola did try its hands on a similar service in Nagpur earlier but it could not hail a long run due to some complications.
