Electric vehicles (EV) usage has seen notable trial runs especially from delivery companies such as Zomato, Amazon, Grofers, Blue Dart, among others and is likely to aid government’s efforts to reduce air pollution as well.
Last week online grocery retailer bigbasket announced an ambitious plan to increase its current fleet of electric vehicles (EVs) to1000 electric vans and 2000 electric bikes in the next one year for its last-mile delivery service across metro cities.
While analysts feel it is a smart eco-friendly move by bigbasket to cut down delivery cost, there are infrastructure issues that need to be addressed.
The Bengaluru-based company currently has 150 electric vans and 50 bikes.
Bigbasket first introduced Mahindra EVs, e-Supro model in 2016 for its last-mile delivery operations in Delhi-NCR. Over the years, bigbasket has worked with multiple e-van OEMs such as Gayam Motors and Euler Motors.
In the e-bike space it has worked with players such as Hero, Okinawa, Li-on, and Greaves Cotton.
In July, bigbasket’s smaller rival Grofers said that for its last-mile delivery fleet it is looking to deploy 500 electric vehicles (e-vans) by the year end. The online grocery store currently has a fleet of electric vehicles in Delhi-NCR and Jaipur only. It plans to ramp up its EV fleet to other cities by December.
Recently India’s largest e-commerce retailer Flipkart had said that it would replace about 40% of its delivery fleet with electric vehicle vans by March next year.
“Through the aggressive push for EVs, e-comm retailers have been able to lower their delivery costs.”
Reference- Fortune India, Bigbasket PR,