Saar: It was floated in April this year but was put on hold after a preliminary pre-bid meeting.

Energy Efficiency Services Ltd. (EESL) has reportedly scrapped its second tender to buy 10,000 pure electric cars. The said tender was floated in April this year but was put on hold after a preliminary pre-bid meeting amongst the think tanks. The main reason for binning the tender revolves around the clarifications required on specifications of electric cars. News regarding this also came to light in the month of May 2018, which read that the Department of Heavy Industry (DHI) may alter the charging station specifications, opening gates for foreign players to jump in. Back then, it was believed that EESL in looking to get 2,000 bigger and stronger EVs as part of its second tender.

Last year, when EESL released the first tender to procure 10,000 e-cars, it became the biggest of its kind in the world. Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra jointly bagged it and have been fulfilling it ever since. The Safari-maker even delivered 5 units of the Tigor Electric to EESL during a MoU (memorandum of understanding) signing ceremony in Mumbai in May 2018. That very day, EESL also announced that the original deadline of putting all 10,000 e-cars into use by June 2018 has been extended to March 2019. Do the math and that’s a delay of nine months. The core reason for this delay in deployment was attributed to the lack of charging points.

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EESL had said that it would spend Rs 2,400 crore to procure a total of 20,000 e-cars by March 2019. With the second tender now binned, the state-run energy services company can focus on successfully procuring and deploying the first 10,000 e-cars. In addition to that, it would be closely working with DHI to carve out a better, more rounded tender for buying more electric cars. Recently, there were also reports highlighting that the government officials weren’t happy with the e-cars which were given to them by EESL. The main issue was the limited range on a single charge. Tata Motors, being the biggest supplier of e-cars in that first tender, responded by saying that the Tigor Electric meets all those requirements which EESL had put as part of the specifications.

Source: ET Auto