A year ago in 2023, Blue Energy Motors raised USD10m for investing in gas truck manufacture.

The new EiV 9 is a 9-metre, 16-ton gross vehicle weight low entry city bus, powered using a Permanent Magnet Synchronous AC Motor offering an output of 235Kw @ 1330 rev/min fitted with lithium ion NMC batteries in modular battery packs for different storage capacity options.

The order is for an 11-ton e-truck - the second generation of which is undergoing testing and should be ready for production by the end of the year.

The all-electric eCanter for India is to be imported as a Completely Built-up Unit (CBU) from Japan, where the battery electric platform of the first-generation eCanter has been in production since the beginning of 2017.

The first ‘B6.7H’ hydrogen engines rolled off the production line at Jamshedpur in March and are now being integrated in Tata trucks.

JBM makes fully integral vehicles at its 20,000 capacity plant in Haryana.

The company says its engineering team has focussed on making the ELON 3X ultra-light weight and modular in design. It is based on, what Blackbuck calls, the ‘ELON skateboard platform’, which is seen as a way to offer other length models, like ELON 2X (10.5m) and ELON 4X (14.5m) in the coming years.

Tata Motors has delivered a further 100 StarBus EV buses to Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), as part of a contract for 921 units of Tata Motors’ Urban 12m electric buses. (Deliveries to date account for approximately 40% of the contract, Tata Motors states).

The ULE bus offers a gross vehicle weight (GVW) rating of 16t and is powered by Ashok Leyland’s H-series 6-cylinder 4-valve 184 kW (246 hp) rear engine matched with an automatic (Allison) transmission.

The company claims that it has delivered some 1,500 electric buses to date.

With two of an order for five Switch EiV 22 buses for Gujarat delivered, these are the first e-double deck buses to be delivered to Gujarat; others are already in service in Mumbai and Hyderabad.

This is the first time Eicher has fitted an Automated Manual Transmission (AMT) in the Pro 8035XM tipper; the E-Smart Shift AMT is derived from Volvo Truck’s I-Shift AMT.