Delhi to add 100 electric buses to DTC fleet by April first week

An electric bus run by the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) near Mayur Vihar. Photo by Manish Kumar/Mongabay.

The Delhi Transport Corporation is likely to add 100 more electric buses to its fleet by March-end or the first week of April, officials said on Sunday.

The new additions will take the Delhi Transport Corporation's (DTC) electric bus fleet to 400.

Delhi Transport Commissioner Ashish Kundra recently visited Tata Motors' Lucknow plant to inspect the buses. Last month, DTC MD Shilpa Shinde visited Karnataka to oversee the prototype models.

"We will get 100 electric buses by March-end or the first week of April. After that, 200-250 buses will arrive every month.

"A DTC team had gone to Karnataka to see the prototype. It has been cleared and now we have come to the manufacturing plant in Lucknow for a formal inspection of the buses," said an official.

Equipped with security features such as CCTV cameras and panic buttons, these buses will hit the national capital's roads in the next three to four weeks following the configuration and registration process, he added.

The 100 new electric buses will be the first of 1,500 that will be inducted into the Transport department's fleet by the end of 2023, taking their total number to 1,800.

While flagging off the electric buses in January, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said 80 per cent of Delhi's total fleet will be electric by the end of 2025.

Sharing a roadmap for the procurement of electric buses, he had said that the government would buy 1,500 such vehicles in 2023. By 2025, 6,380 electric buses will be procured.

There are nearly 7,200 buses plying on the city roads -- the DTC runs 3,900 buses and the cluster runs 3,300. At the same time, 2,600 buses will go off the roads in the next one-and-a-half years.