India’s commercial capital, Bombay, is set to expand its fleet of red double-decker electric buses, similar to London buses, with two hundred new vehicles to enter service by the end of the year.
Punit PARANJPE / AFP
The electric bus was developed by Switch Mobility, a branch of Indian auto giant Ashok Leyland.
“We want ordinary people to use electric mobility by meeting net zero emissions targets,” Mahesh Babu, managing director of Switch Mobility India, told AFP as he unveiled the new fleet on Thursday.
The 200 new buses are due to enter service in Mumbai, western India, from December and will join some 400 other identical buses already in service.
The Switch EiV 22 vehicle, built in India, has 65 passenger seats and a battery pack that, according to the company, gives it a range of 250 kilometres.
Double-decker electric buses, designed by this company, were put into service in London in 2014.
Red double-decker buses made their debut in Bombay in 1937, then powered by fossil fuels. Up to 900 of them served the city lines. This aging stock was phased out beginning in the 1990s and today fewer than 50 are still in circulation.
The desire to electrify public transport is partly fueled by the need to reduce pollution in cities where the air is among the most polluted in the world.
India, with a population of 1.4 billion, is the world’s third largest carbon emitter. The government has pledged to achieve net zero emissions by 2070.
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