The next time you feel a juggernaut whiz past with nary a ‘whish’, you will feel a tingle of excitement running down your spine. That will be the sleek and silent, low-slung beauty, an ebus made by BYD Auto Industry of China.

On Wednesday, Goldstone Infratech, which is said to be the Indian distributor for the Chinese ebus-maker, offered the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) one of these, the BYD K series, a battery-operated bus with 324 KW of power.

When contacted, Executive Director for TSRTC’s Greater Hyderabad Zone A. Purushotham said they planned to run this environmental-friendly, pollution-free bus on the Jubilee Bus Station-Shamshabad airport route as a pilot project for a few days to check its efficacy.

The service is to be launched within a day or two, most likely by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.

The 12-metre-long bus is a 31-seater and is low-slung with a ground clearance of 360 mm. It can run for slightly more than 180 km on a single charge over a seven-hour duration and has a charging time ranging between two and a half to three hours for the next shift. It can accelerate from 0 to 50 KMPH in about 20 seconds, powered silently by electric motors in the wheel hubs and can achieve top speed of over 96 km an hour. Enquiries about the details like power and the like with engineers revealed that the 324 KW of output was almost equivalent to the 295 horsepower that the luxury buses like the Volvo produce. “From what I have seen, it is almost like our Garuda (Volvo) buses,” said a senior engineer.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Hyderabad / by Suresh Krishnamoorthy / Hyderabad – February 10th, 2017