India's First Electric Taxi Service Launched In Delhi With 70 Cars

Gensol Mobility, a member in the Gensol group, said it has launched the first electric vehicle (EV) taxi fleet in India, BLU-SMART, around 70 cars, which is expected to ramp up to 400 automobiles by late March 2019.

Blu-Smart is the first environmentally friendly, multimodal and AI-based on-demand taxi service in India, it features high-quality service, smart transportation, smart parking, and smart charging.

Blu-Smart is different from other taxi services because it uses electric cars exclusively. The company is talking to several car companies including Mahindra & Mahindra, Nissan, and Tata Motors to equip electric vehicles (EVs).

Not only that, they claimed to have made a Rs 50 crore investment to establish the necessary toll infrastructure in many parts of the city for the operation of this new type of vehicle. In the promising future, its promoters will invest Rs 70.92 crore into the expansion plans. The company hopes to fully replace existing non-green players like Uber and Ola.

In particular, the current investment will be used to install 65 electric vehicle charging stations, each with 20 charging points throughout NCR. Initially, Blu-Smart has prepared 18 similar stations, allowing electric cars to safely charge at a charging station within a 5 kilometers radius of their positions.

The service of electric vehicle taxis helps promote the choice of people to use more electric vehicles, protecting the environment. At first, there were only a few individual electric vehicles, now with a fleet of electric taxis, sooner or later the whole country would choose electric vehicles. Initially, the service is exclusive to Blu-Smart, but the idea will soon be spread and widely accepted to many other automakers with a lofty goal to reduce fuel consumption and air pollution. Before that, the Ola taxi company also tried to use the same service in Nagpur but the plan could not continue because of several complications.

This week, the booking app will be available to everyone who wants to book a car online. Regarding the price of this type of Blu-Smart, it will be between Rs 14 and Rs 16 per kilometer for compact sedans (eVeritos). In addition, they also promised that there would be no higher charge during rush hours.