Under 140 Characters
While the nation is getting taken over by the new e-buses, SUN Mobility is urging companies to adopt the battery swapping technique to ensure better transportation.
What happens when your remote control’s battery gets weak? You simply replace it with a new one! E-Buses could be the future of transportation in India and it’s really important to keep them functioning optimally. Ashok Leyland, a company that has manufactured air-conditioned electric buses has collaborated with SUN Mobility to introduce the ‘battery swapping’ technique in e-buses. A regular e-bus battery takes nearly 4 hours to charge to make it run for 225 km, but with this technique the e-bus won’t have to stick around in one position for a long time and transport will continue normally.What Is It?
How Can It Be Done?
Ashok Leyland has designed buses in a way that with a 2 minute procedure, the battery can be swapped easily. They will establish Quick Interchange Stations (QISs) across the city and they will act as fuel refill centers for e-buses. This way fully charged stand-by batteries will be available for all e-buses that will come to the QISs to go through the battery swapping procedure. It’s great because now the e-bus will be able to continue its journey normally without wastage of charging time.
What’s Happening Now?
Currently, Ahmedabad is the only city in India that has running e-buses and also has a QIS at Ranip Depot. The city aims to have 50 e-buses by April and 350 by the end of the year.
Pune’s e-buses will be launching by March 2019 as well and it plans to have 330 by the end of the year.
