new delhi a city bus that ashok leyland has just unveiled could help attract the focus again to battery swapping a cheaper method to operate electric vehicles provided there is infrastructure to replace their power cells frequently the circuit s which ashok leyland is showcasing at the ongoing auto expo 2018 is cheaper to buy as well as operate compared with other electric buses the hinduja group company claimed its vehilce has just one lithium ion battery compared with a pack of cells in other electric city buses a problem with the single battery is that it needs to be recharged at short intervals but in city buses that can be addressed by changing the battery at the layover time since the battery pack accounts for 5060 of the cost of electric vehicles swapping helps reduce the bus price said the company the idea of running large vehicles using battery swapping was initially proposed by ashok jhunjhunwala a professor at iitchennai and adviser to the union government on electric mobility but many had scoffed at the idea due to unavailability of associated infrastructure ashok leyland indias largest bus maker took up the challenge to prove the critics wrong by making a commercially viable bus based on battery swapping it developed the circuit s in partnership with sun mobility a company cofounded by chetan maini the man behind indias first electric car reva the bus is targeted at operators plying on city routes city buses have fixed route kilometres so the battery can be changed between trips according to ashok leyland as much as 85 of the city routes in india are shorter than 35 kms in 60 of cases it is less 20 km the city bus requirement in india is estimated at 750010000 a year the company estimates that buses based on battery swapping have the potential to corner 60008000 of that market a 500kg battery in the circuit s bus can be replaced in 25 minutes ashok leyland managing director vinod dasari said he said the company will not limit its focus to city buses alone as volume picks up there is a sizeable opportunity to scale up battery swapping to school buses shift buses and even longdistance buses he said under the current plan ashok leyland will provide the bus while sun mobility will arrange support infrastructure and services such as charging stations and reinstalling of the battery ashok leyland will pay sun mobility on the basis of the electricity consumed to recharge the batteries sun mobility vicechairman maini said battery swapping was never tried on such a large scale anywhere in the world the two companies are offering the entire solution for city bus operators by ashutosh r shyam et bureau published on feb 9 2018 at 0840 am ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post post find this comment offensive choose your reason below and click on the