CESL floats Rs3,000-cr tender for 1 lakh electric 3-wheelers

New Delhi: State-run Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Energy Efficiency Services Ltd, has floated a Rs 3,000 crore tender to buy one lakh electric three-wheelers for different use categories such as garbage disposal, freight loaders, food and vaccine transport and passenger autos, its MD and CEO Mahua Acharya said.

After two and four-wheelers, India is eyeing to turn a significant part of 6 million three-wheelers on roads into electric vehicles as it chases the ambitious target of converting 30 per cent of all wheels on roads into electric by 2030. From freight loaders to garbage disposal vans, going electric helps three-wheelers save on the running cost of the vehicles. Also unlike four-wheelers, three-wheelers offer easy options of replacing discharged batteries with charged ones, helping save on the time taken to charge.

"Before floating the tender, we launched a public exercise for demand aggregation. So we got commitments from financiers, fleet aggregators and others such as states that have funds under Swatch Bharat Mission, for about 85,000 three-wheelers. And so we kept a margin of an additional 15,000 and floated a tender to buy 1 lakh electric three-wheelers," she said.