Commercial vehicles, including trucks and buses, burn millions of litres of fuel every year. This number, with India's growing population and its growing public transportation needs, will be much bigger in the years to come. As a matter of fact, there are over 1.6 million buses registered in the country.
The Government of India has envisioned converting these fossil fuel-powered buses with electric and other green fuels by 2030. These targets are not only helping the country fight pollution but also giving birth to some mammoth business opportunities for the supply chain, component makers, battery manufacturers, and commercial vehicle OEMs.
PMI Coaches, one of India's largest bus body and coach manufacturers, in a bid to expand its business potential, has taken up the role of electric buses and electric truck OEM. Manvi Jain, Head - Corporate Affairs, PMI Electro, in a conversation with Mobility Outlook, noted, 'We got into a technology partnership with Foton and are manufacturing 7-metre, 9-metre and 12-metre electric buses. PMI Electro has almost500 electric buses operating on India roads at the moment.'
PMI Electro has forecast revenue of over INR 800 crore for the current fiscal. It had posted revenue figures of INR 380 crore last fiscal. It is worth mentioning here that PMI Coaches, the parent company of PMI Electro, has been posting revenue figures of around INR 100 crore for the last several years.
'PMI Electro started electric bus manufacturing in 2017. The company does end to end manufacturing of electric buses under the name PMI Electro,' shared Jain. PMI Electro brought electric buses to India with its technology partner Foton.
Business Through Government's Initiatives
The company is expecting the market for electric buses to be worth more than a million units in the coming few years. The Government of India and the different State Governments, on an average, add around 90,000 to one lakh new buses to their fleets every year. PMI Electric, on similar lines, expects that its majority of electric bus orders will come from different governments over the next five years.
PMI Electro currently has an order book of over 1,200 electric buses. The company also claims to have more orders under the Government of India's FAME II scheme. The point to be noted here is that all the orders PMI Electro has fulfilled or is working on completing are from the Government of India or the State Governments. 'All the orders that we have are issued by the government under different schemes,' shared Jain.
Electric buses, as per the company, will be given more weightage over CNG buses in the near future as the former requires setting up big fuelling stations compared to the latter. Moreover, the transportation of CNG to pumps remains a big challenge compared to electricity which can easily be drawn from the national electricity grids.
'We as a country have a very advanced electricity grid. The national electricity grid will be one of the biggest enablers for the electric vehicle industry. The same will help take electric mobility to every corner of India,' noted Aman Garg, Director, PMI Electro.
PMI Electro believes that the complete transition of fossil fuels powered buses to electric buses will take place anywhere between 2030 and 2035. This is somewhat in line with the vision of the government of India.
Potential In Private Sector
Though the company has not delivered many electric buses to the private sector, it also sees a huge potential in the private electric buses market. Thousands of diesel and CNG powered buses operate at various airports in India. Then there is the market for school and college buses, followed by the corporate sector.
'We are already seeing the electric transition happening in the private buses market. Off and on we do get a lot of private queries and we are focused on answering those queries. I see a lot of movement here,' shared Garg.
Many corporate houses are reaching out to them with queries about electric buses that can transport people within and outside office campuses. Corporates investing in electric mobility for their employees are considered CSR initiatives.
'We are researching how we can help the school bus and college buses market. We will have to bring in cost reduction because of the low budgets. We will come out with a low-budget bus for schools in the next few months,' noted Jain.
PMI Coaches manufacturers bus bodies for various school buses including ones from GD Goenka. The company, however, has no plans to explore international markets for exporting electric buses. It is of the view that the Indian market is big enough for an OEM, and it will stay that way for at least a decade to come. 'The electric vehicles market in India is going to explode exponentially in the coming years. We think there will be a supply constraint in India. We will explore international markets but not now,” explained Garg.
Exploring Electric Vehicle Verticals
PMI Electro, apart from electric school buses, is also exploring all other commercial electric mobility verticals. Different teams from the company are researching the potential of smaller electric CVs in India. As the company is already in the bus vertical, it is natural to explore the electric truck market. The truck market in the country is said to be one of the biggest. Moreover, its parent company has 32 years of experience manufacturing bus and truck bodies.
'The reason we are investing in a new facility is that we want to venture out into new products; we will only enter new electric mobility verticals once we are sure that the product is safe and fit for deployment. We will make major announcements around new verticals from us by 2025, said Manvi. Smaller CVs are also on the radar of the company.
PMI Electro has a current capacity of manufacturing 1,500 buses at its Delhi NCR facility. It had recently announced an investment of INR 250 crore to build a new manufacturing plant in Pune, Maharashtra.
Once set up, this plant will enable PMI Electro to manufacture 4,000 electric CVs annually. The company imports battery cells and motors from international markets, whereas all the other components used in manufacturing electric buses are sourced from within the country.