AL joins hands with Sun Mobility

Ashok Leyland (AL) has formed of a strategic alliance with SUN Mobility, promoted by Chetan Maini, founder of Reva and Uday Khemka, Vice Chairman of SUN Group. This would be one of the key drivers for Ashok Leyland to achieve its target of clocking 10-15% of its total volumes from electric mobility solutions by 2020, Vinod K Dasari, Managing Director, Ashok Leyland, said. He added that the company has got 3 orders, on a pilot basis, for buses based on this technology.

With this partnership Ashok Leyland will have a technology that would lead to access swap and charge, which will cater to short distance, mainly metros, serviced by STUs, Dasari said.

This global partnership between Ashok Leyland and SUN Mobility will leverage India’s innovation and engineering potential to develop truly world- class electric mobility solutions, Maini said.

Ashok Leyland has been a pioneer in electric buses, hybrid buses, in both CNG as well as diesel, including those that do not require a plug-in. SUN Mobility aims to be the leading provider of universal energy infrastructure and services to accelerate mass electric vehicle usage.

The partners will be investing around Rs 100 crore to develop the product. The first prototype of the product is expected to be showcased in January 2018. Ashok Leyland got 2 electric technologies, which one comes with Circuit buses and from Ashok Leyland’s UK subsidiary Optare. Both are catering to long distance mobility.

Dasari said, “This global exclusive alliance can be expanded to trucks and LCVs. To start with it will be used for buses. The newly launched BS IV vehicles fitted with iEGR is performing extremely well and we are expanding our capacity to meet customer demand,” he said.