As a part of Andhra Pradesh’s smart cites initiative Ongole city will be the first of the six planned smart cities to have e-bikes. The move is the state’s bid to promote zero emission clean transportation.
The government plans to deploy e-bikes across all the smart cities in AP to implement public e-bike sharing programs. The electric bikes will be supplied to the state by Hyderabad-based startup Gayam Motor Works
“The usage of regular cycles alone can be limiting. So taking that into consideration, the government has decided to deploy a combination of electric and general cycles,” says Sri Harsha Bavirishetty, Chief Operations Officer, GMW.
GMW’s LIMITLESS Electric Bikes was inaugurated by Dr P Narayana, Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development and Prakasam, Vadarevu Vinaychand , District Collector of Prakasam on the eve of Independence Day in Prakasham district.
The government is planning to transform six urban civic bodies into smart cities. These are Srikakulam, Eluru, Ongole, Nellore, Kurnool and Anantapur.
The AP government will be giving GMW an order of 40-50 bikes for the first round of deployment.
Gayam Motor Works is a T-Hub-based startup that develops electric bikes and smart e-autos. Its electric bikes offering is called ‘Limitless’ e-bikes.
What’s different about the bikes is that they come with different levels of pedal assistances to give you a push. When you start pedalling, the motor kicks in and supplies about 80% of the energy. If you don’t want to pedal, there is also a throttle next to the right handle, which can take you from 0-25 kmph in five seconds.
This bike is powered by a lithium-ion battery and runs 30-60 kms on a single charge. The price varies between Rs 28,000 to Rs 45,000. Against a moped’s running cost of about Rs 1.5/km, ‘Limitless’ has a running cost of only seven paise per km.
GMW’s e-bikes will be integrated through mobile and cloud using IoT. All riders part of the bike-sharing program have to just install an app, which will show them the availability of the bicycles, pick up and drop off locations across the area.
A smart metering system will bill the ride automatically from the app and the amount will be deducted from the user’s wallet in the app.
They will provide supervisors for the ride-sharing program and a dashboard as well. Supervisors can track all the vehicles being used on this platform and keep a track of when and where a bike was picked up from.
Sri Harsha says that the dashboard will also give supervisors insights into the usage of the fleet and get additional data about which routes are being used and how the routes are during peak hours, etc.
GMW will also enable geo-tagging and sensors on the bikes to ensure they’re not stolen.
“We have drawn something like a virtual boundary. If a bike goes beyond that boundary, we can get alerts at any point and track the location of the bike,” says Sri Harsha.
While the ride-sharing program is yet to be rolled out on a large scale, GMW is in discussions to deploy the e-bikes across all the six planned smart cities in the state.
Prior to this, the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC) deployed a mass electric two-wheeler mobility system with a fleet of 100 ‘Limitless’ electric bikes in Vishakhapatnam, which will be used by sanitary supervisors, for their daily patrol and supervision.
AP government has also deployed GMW’s electric auto-rickshaws for waste disposal, becoming the first state to do so.
The smart electric autos run for around 100 kilometres per charge and have a running cost of as low as 50 paise per kilometre. Its cargo version ‘Taskman' has a load capacity of over 450 kilos.
This article has been produced with inputs from T-Hub as a part of a partner program.