It deserved to be brought back on the city roads, officials added. It is manufactured by a Brazilian company Marcopolo SA and considered the best in its class. However, officials said the main problem with the bus was the engine and body. The buses, bogged down by technical issues like high exhaust emissions, engine problems and other glitches, were slated to be scrapped by the government as they were incurring losses around `1 crore per month for BMTC a few years ago. Other efforts by the BMTC to procure 150 new electric buses are likely to continue. If successful, this will make it the first fleet of electric buses in Bengaluru. These include buses sold by manufacturers like Volvo,” Yadav said.These buses, most of which have been in the fleet for many years, will also require some body work and refurbishing before being put back on the fleet.īENGALURU: In an attempt to salvage the Tata-Marcopolo buses, the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) plans to retrofit 100 of these buses to run on battery power. “With the introduction of BS VI slated to happen soon, we can also look at converting these old buses to run on battery power. However, we decided to approach the private sector for a solution and so put out the EOI,” Yadav said.Ĭurrently, the BMTC has a fleet of around 800 air-conditioned buses and a large part of these are Bharat Stage (BS) II and III vehicles. “We were initially told that it might not be possible as the batteries would have to be placed on top of the bus.
A Pune-based company, KPIT, had in 2015, demonstrated the technology when a retrofitted bus was presented to the Parliament for the use of members. BMTC Chairman M Nagaraju Yadav said the company had then invited an Expression of Interest (EOI) from companies for the same.Based on inquiries made by the BMTC, it is possible to retrofit these buses.
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