Bhubaneswar: The Capital Region Urban Transport (CRUT), which runs bus services in Bhubaneswar, will expand its fleet by introducing 200 electric buses within the next two months, Additional Director General of Police (Crime) and Managing Director, CRUT, Arun Bothra, said.
“Currently, 50 electric buses are plying in the city and the CRUT 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 Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) Deemed to be University here.
He further said that 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 today,” he said.
There are also plans 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, Bothra informed.
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 has also launched an electric vehicle policy under which people purchasing e-vehicles would get subsidies which was among the highest in the country, he added.
Vice-Chancellor of SOA Pradipta Kumar Nanda presided over the inaugural programme, which was also addressed by Vice-Chancellor of Odisha University of Technology and Research (OUTR) Bibhuti Bhushan Biswal, Professor and Program Leader, Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore, Akshay Kumar Rathore, President, IEEE Smart Village, Ranjan Kapur, and Additional Dean (Student Affairs), ITE, Renu Sharma.
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 in 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, General Chair, SeFeT-2023, Sharma said.
Delegates from different countries including United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, Japan, China, The Netherlands, Taiwan, Qatar and Thailand are attending the conference.
Sharma said altogether 510 submitted articles for the conference had been subjected to a rigorous review process after which 251 articles had been selected for publication in IEEE Xplore.
