KSRTC electric bus starts trial run in Trivandrum
The Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) rolled out its first electric bus on Monday, making Kerala the sixth Indian state to run the service.
KSRTC will carry out a trial run for 15 days starting from Monday, out of which 8 days will be in Thiruvananthapuram and 7 days in Ernakulam, following which it will conduct services in Kochi and Kozhikode.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in his Facebook post on Monday said that if the services are successful, they will roll out around 300 electric buses for service throughout the state.
“Electric buses are in line with the sustainable development concept of Kerala that the government is considering,” said Pinarayi in his post.
During the trial runs, the services will operate in various terrains, including high ranges and local conditions.
A teaser demo was held at Pappanamcode workshop in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday, where the KSRTC chairman and managing director Tomin J Thachankary introduced the bus.
“The bus will be charged at night, so there won’t be any difficulty of overloading due to the e-bus charging. It requires between four-five hours to get fully charged,” said Thachankary to the New Indian Express.
Videos – Marunadan TV, Red FM.
The buses by the Hyderabad-based Gold Stone Infratech Ltd. (GIL) will be given for the trial run to the state, free of cost.
An E-bus that is fully charged can cover a distance of about 350 kilometres. The electricity consumption for one kilometre will be about 1.5 to 1.8 kwh.
Some of the salient features of these battery electric vehicle (BEV) buses are reduced noise pollution, air suspension for better ride comfort, disc brakes with anti-lock braking system, kneeling mechanism for persons with disabilities, senior citizens and pregnant woman, CCTV cameras and GPS tracking.
