(ET)
State-owned Energy Efficiency Services Ltd, which leads the country’s energy efficiency and conservation drive, has thrown open a challenge for entrepreneurs and startups to develop electric cars that are more efficient in terms of performance and cheaper than what it had sought in its ecars tender last year.
As part of a two months-long innovation challenge based on a common streak of energy efficient solutions, Energy Efficiency Services (EESL), along with World Bank and World Resources Institute (WRI), has sought variants of electric cars that can run 200 km or more on a single charge and is priced not more than Rs 10 lakh. The solutions, if viable, will be scaled up and commercialised by EESL, senior officials said. Although proposed as a means to seek innovative solution in the electric mobility segment, the specification is strikingly different from the 130 km range that EESL had sought in a tender it floated last year for procurement of 10,000 electric cars. Home grown automakers Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra bagged the tender, with each car priced at Rs 11.2 lakhs.
