The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) has invited bids to select a service provider to procure 300 electric buses on a gross cost contract (GCC) model. The contract will also include the operation and maintenance (O&M) services.

Under the gross-cost contract, the operator is paid a specified amount to provide a specified service for a specified time. All revenue collected is for the authority (BMTC).

The tender has been floated under the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid) and Electric Vehicles-II (FAME II) program. The length of the electric buses should be 12 meters. The contract period will be ten years and extendable by two years from the commencement of the commercial operations.

The last date to submit the bids online is November 19, 2020, and the opening of technical bids will take place on November 23, 2020. Interested bidders will have to submit an amount of ₹1.50 million (~$20,210) as the bid security deposit.

To participate in the competitive bidding process, the bidder should be a registered bus manufacturer or a central or public sector undertaking (PSU) with their subsidiaries having tie-ups with at least one electric bus manufacturer. The maximum number of members in a consortium should be four. A joint venture or consortium should have one original equipment manufacturer (OEM) mandatorily, and the other members may be bus operators, aggregators, or financers.

The bidder should have manufactured and delivered 50 electric buses or 100 compressed natural gas (CNG) buses in the last three financial years. Being declared a successful bidder for the project, the bidder will be required to incorporate a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to implement it.

Regarding the financial criteria, the bidder should have a minimum average annual turnover of ₹1 billion (~$13.47 million) for the last three financial years. The bidder should also have a positive net worth in the previous three financial years.

The BMTC will ensure that the buses run for at least 70,000 km/bus per year on an average.  As per the tender documents, the delivery of 50% of tendered vehicles should take place within six months from the date of the issuance of the letter of award (LoA), and the complete delivery of all 300 vehicles should take place within 12 months.

As per Mercom’s India Tender Tracker, BMTC has so far issued tenders for 390 electric buses, and Karnataka has issued tenders for 530 electric buses.

In March this year, the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation invited bids to select service providers for the procurement, operation, and maintenance of 50 intercity AC electric buses under the GCC model with and without demand incentives.

Earlier, BMTC had invited bids for the procurement and operation & maintenance of nine-meter 90 electric buses under the GCC model.

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