"CAN ELECTRIC BUSES TAKE OVER THE WORLD?"

Mahesh Babu, Director & Chief Executive Officer of Switch Mobility India takes Utkarsh Agarwal, Editorial Lead of BW Autoworld on an electric bus ride, describing the future of electric buses and how it is transforming public transport. Excerpts:

In 2014, Switch Mobility entered the London (U.K.) market, and in April 2021 in India, since then how has been the journey so far?

Around 8-9 years back, Ashok Leyland acquired a company called Optare in the U.K. Since then, it's now been a decade we have been making electric buses. In 2019-2020, Ashok Leyland decided to bring in the electric vehicle (EV) assets of Optare in Ashok Leyland and form a global company called Switch Mobility. So, since the last 19 months we have been operating globally. We already have around 115 buses on the roads in India, and around 300 buses globally with more than 600 orders in hand and I'm sure it will cross 1000+ orders before the end of the year. That makes us a good front-end brand. In terms of footprint, Switch has a dedicated factory within the Ashok Leyland premises in India. Our manufacturing facility in Chennai will address the Indian supply chain. Globally, we have a factory in Leeds that will cater to the U.K. market, and a factory in Spain will address the European market. We have around 770 people working in the company and around close to 300 people in R&D, as our focus is on bringing new platforms and expanding our footprint between the U.K., Europe and India.

What was the thought behind spinning off a separate company and not make e-buses under Ashok Leyland's name?