With the electric bus market successfully taking off in the country, a new start-up company named ‘Edison Electra’ has announced its plans to locally assemble and supply electric buses for various applications. Present at Busworld India, the company claimed to have bagged 70 orders at the expo, along with an additional 140 orders acquired prior to the event.
The start-up has forged an alliance with Chengdu Bus Co. Ltd. of China, a bus maker based in Chengdu city, Sichuan Province, selling a variety of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles under the brand name of ‘Shudu’. It is planning to assemble products locally in Hyderabad by importing CKD kits from China, whose prototypes will enter for trials in India by mid-September, the company said.
The Founder and Chairman of Edison Electra, Mr. Sajay Marni, claims that homologation and ARAI-certification will be done by December, following which the product deliveries for customers will commence. “The Chengdu electric buses are running successfully for the eighth consecutive year, and the manufacturer has even achieved the longest pure-electric driving range of 680 km on single charge”, he said, while affirming that products and electric technologies are well refined and reliable.
The company says that the LFE 04 Lithium Iron Phosphate used in its buses are sourced from CATL, a Chinese tech firm specializing in battery solutions. “We would offer 7-year bumper-to-bumper warranty for our buses, although the batteries are expected to retain almost 80 per cent of performance even after in service for 12 years”, claims Mr. Marni.
According to Edison Electra, it builds its own EV charging stations under the ‘Charge Me Thomas’ network for the ease of its customers, that too with DC fast chargers of 120 kW, 180 kW, and 240 kW capacity. Its corporate brochure lists out a variety of electric bus products, including city buses, inter-city coaches, feeder buses, and double deckers, along with a host of vehicle management, energy optimization and safety technologies.