According to industry sources, PMI Electro Mobility, EKA Mobility and Olectra Greentech were the three biggest winners of the tender, in which financial bids of 14 of the 16 participating bidders were opened.

Other components of the scheme include a phased manufacturing programme (PMP), which requires a minimum level of domestic value addition.

New Delhi: From fierce bidding where competitors offered prices within a few paise of each other per kilometer to shock and awe at some of the biggest marquee names bowing out of the race, and apprehensions about the actual implementation of the electric buses on designated routes, India’s biggest tender for deploying electric buses under the PM eDRIVE scheme—which has drawn to a close—saw many dramatic moments, at least one legal challenge and a few upsets.

In the end, the legacy bus OEMs – Ashok Leyland and Tata Motors among others – are believed to have returned empty handed from the process. The bidding was conducted by Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL) for supplying and operating 10,900 electric buses across five major Indian cities under the PM eDRIVE scheme.

According to industry sources, PMI Electro Mobility, EKA Mobility and Olectra Greentech were the three biggest winners of the tender, in which financial bids of 14 of the 16 participating bidders were opened. CESL said the rates discovered were “attractive and lower than estimates”.

But the financial evaluation of the successful bids is still ongoing and the respective City Transport Undertakings (CTUs) will be signing concession agreements directly with the selected operators later on. The bids were invited for supplying 4,500 buses to Bengaluru, 2,800 to Delhi, 2,000 to Hyderabad and 1,600 each to Surat and Ahmedabad. The buses to be supplied include AC, Non-AC, 9 m and 12 m electric across various categories such as Standard Floor, Low Floor and BRT buses, aligned with city-specific urban mobility requirements.

As per the tender, private operators will be responsible for the ownership, operation and maintenance of the e-buses, along with the deployment of charging infrastructure and energy management systems at depots provided by the city authorities. The city transport agencies will pay a fixed per-kilometre fee, ensuring affordability and financial sustainability.

One of the successful bidders told ETAuto that for one of the cities, bidders vied with each other aggressively, placing bids within 50–60 paise per km of each other. But for another city, “there was madness. One bidder to the next varied by ₹5–18 per km.” There were a lot of bidding combinations, it was all going very fast. “I think the letters of award will arrive in about two weeks.” As per industry sources, PMI Electro bagged orders for supplying 5,210 electric buses while Olectra bagged 1,785 buses.

Major OEMs draw a blank

Industry sources said that Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland both drew a blank. One person said that bids placed were probably unrealistically high by Tata. Even in previous rounds of tenders for electric bus supplies, Tata had been reluctant due to the large burden it saw on its balance sheet from this single order.

Ashok Leyland has already moved the Delhi High Court against the bidding process, alleging that technical issues did not allow it to submit a bid. Ashok Leyland had participated in the process through subsidiary company Ohm and a competitor had earlier said Ashok Leyland was probably not keen on the tender due to capacity issues.

CEO Ganesh Mani did not return calls seeking a comment. But speaking to analysts after the second quarter results last month, the MD and CEO Shenu Agarwal had said that Ohm was “working diligently on the 10,000 plus PM eDRIVE tender to further add to the growing fleet”.

In the same call, Agarwal had also spoken about new products, including the nine metre bus and asserted that there was enough capacity. “So 9 metre was coming in two different formats. One is the standard floor, the other one is the low floor. We are very close to launching these products now in the market. There is a lot of quantity of 9 metre available through the PM eDRIVE tender also, where we will be bidding on 14th of November. And hopefully, if we win some of those tenders, this 9 metre will really add up our expansion plans in Switch.”

One of the bidders said that the CESL will most likely open bids for another large tender to supply electric buses — 4000 to Maharashtra — in the next few months and that the big Indian OEMs still have a chance to participate in supplying electric buses. “Whoever has won bids this time has a clear plan to deliver buses, others will probably have to tweak their strategies and participate in upcoming government tenders,” he said.

Multiple changes in tender

The tendering process has been a long one, with multiple changes made along the way. One of the biggest was allowing consortia to bid, since bus OEMs were reluctant to operate the buses alongside supplying them. A senior government official had told ETAuto earlier that the eligibility criteria had been changed to allow a wider pool of applicants since large infrastructure companies can also participate. This opened up the bid to even those parties which have nothing to do with electric buses (municipal service operators, large infrastructure companies) and allowed a wider applicant pool and wider finance availability for bidders.

PM eDRIVE scheme

The e-bus program is a part of the PM eDRIVE scheme which seeks to electrify public transport. The scheme supports the deployment of electric buses using the Gross Cost Contracting (GCC) model, where the operator owns, operates and maintains the buses and charging infrastructure, while the relevant authority (Public Transport Agency/State Transport Unit) pays a pre-decided per kilometre fee derived through a competitive bidding process. The revenue generated from transport services is collected by the authority.

The scheme has a total budget outlay of ₹4,391 crore for providing demand incentives related to the roll-out of 14,028 e-buses in all. In phase I, the proposal is to deploy 10,900 buses across five cities. E-buses are incentivised if their ex-factory price is less than ₹2 crore and the incentive is the multiple of the battery capacity and ₹10,000 with a limit of ₹35 lakh for standard buses under 12 metres in length. The scheme aims to reduce fossil fuel dependency, lower carbon emissions, and strengthen the domestic EV manufacturing ecosystem through incentives, subsidies and the establishment of charging infrastructure.