CHARGE+ZONE launches India’s first Fast Charging network for electric buses in Ahmedabad

On Wednesday, Dec 25th, 2019 – Ahmedabad took a major leap towards greener public transport as Gujarat CM Mr Vijay Rupani flagged off 32 electric buses. These buses will be operated by Ahmedabad JanMarg Limited in partnership with Ashok Leyland.

In a first, the buses will use a fast-charging network that has been built-up at Naranpura Depot, Ahemadabad. The buses manufactured by Ashok Leyland cover a range of 275-300 km on a single charge and can be fully charged in 2.5 hours using the fast chargers.

The fast charging facility, based on CCS2 Charging Standard, has been set up by charging network company CHARGE+ZONE, that has so far installed more than 100 charging points across 6 cities and also counts Glyd (a Mahindra & Mahindra initiative), Bajaj Auto, EEE-Taxi and BluSmart among its clients.

The heart of this Charging Network is a cloud-based and IoT enabled Charging Management System that helps with fleet management and captures data on charger utilization as well as electricity consumption.

Also Read: Design of Charging Infrastructure for electric buses

Speaking to EVreporter, Charge+Zone’s Founder and CEO Kartikey Hariyani informed that their company started laying the groundwork for this charging network in April 2019 and the team overcame a fair share of logistical, regulatory and testing related challenges in setting up this first of a kind charging network in India.

“Our expertise in indigenous design & engineering starts with micro-siting, preparation of charging bay layouts as per site analytics & similarly whole charging infrastructure got built into steps. In partnership with Ashok Leyland and Ahemadabad Janmarg Limited, we have created this innovative charging platform by building 11kV switchyard and taking 3.75 MW of load capacity into consideration. We thank our partners and stakeholders like Delta Electronics, iCreate, EDII Gandhinagar among others”, added Kartikey.

CHARGE+ZONE, under the aegis of Department of Science & Technology, Govt of India was co-incubated at iCREATE and CrAdLE EDII in Ahmedabad, under Startup India program.

To know more about other popular Charging Networks and their work, visit our resource on “Charging Networks in India”.