CRUT to expand fleet with 200 e-buses in two months: Bothra

Bhubaneswar: The Capital Region Urban Transport (CRUT), responsible for bus services in the capital city will expand its fleet by introducing 200 electric buses within the next two months, Arun Bothra, additional director general of Police (Crime) and managing director, CRUT, said.

CRUT is presently operating 50 electric buses in the city and aims to replace its entire fleet of vehicles with e-buses, Bothra said while addressing the inaugural programme of the four-day Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 3rd International Conference on Sustainable Energy and Future Electric Transportation (SeFeT-2023) at the Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) Deemed to be University here recently.

Bothra said the shift to electric transportation was necessary in view of the threat posed by climate change. “The threat to environment is real. Initially when people talked about the need to protect environment, they were mocked. But we are witnessing floods in Rajasthan and the disasters in the Himalayas,” he said.

He said while 50 electric autos were operating in Bhubaneswar at present it was planned to add 200 more e-autos as part of the government’s commitment to the cause of sustainability. As a policy, these e-autos are operated exclusively by women, transgenders and HIV positive people.

Besides, the government had started a vehicle scrapping facility with the objective of scrapping all vehicles unfit for use scientifically within the next three to four years, he said. The government also had launched an electric vehicle policy under which people purchasing e-vehicles would get subsidies which was among the highest in the country, he said.

Prof (Dr) Pradipta Kumar Nanda, vice-chancellor of SOA, presided over the inaugural programme which was also addressed by Prof Bibhuti Bhushan Biswal, vice-chancellor of Odisha University of Technology and Research (OUTR), Dr Akshay Kumar Rathore, IEEE Fellow, Professor and Program Leader, Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore, Dr Ranjan Kapur, president, IEEE Smart Village and Prof Renu Sharma, additional dean (Student Affairs), ITER.

Dr. Kapur said there were around one billion people in the world who had no access to technology and IEEE was working in four continents to bridge that gap. “Advancing technology for humanity is our motto,” he said adding they had funded 100 enterprises worldwide within the last ten years.

More than 500 researchers from across the world are attending the conference which has provided a platform for engineers, researchers, scientists and academicians to present their work, share experiences and ideas in the realm of renewable energy, electric transportation, power electronics, electric drives, control techniques, smart grids, communication protocols, intelligent charging infrastructure and standards, Prof Sharma, general chair, SeFeT-2023 said.

Delegates from different countries including United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, Japan, China, The Netherlands, Taiwan, Qatar and Thailand are attending the conference. Prof Sharma said altogether 510 had submitted articles for the conference, which will be reviewed after which 251 articles had been selected for publication in IEEE Xplore.