Your humble dakiya may soon give up his bicycle for a more comfortable ride, thanks to a pilot project to experiment with electric trolleys for the postman.
Two dozen lucky postmen in Rajasthan will lay their hands on the nation’s first electric postal tricycle, the result of collaboration between the Durgapur-based Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI) and the Pune-based Kinetic Motor Company.
“We would like to first take feedback from the postmen before expanding the project,” said Sachin Pilot, Union minister of state for communication and information technology.
The tricycle-rickshaws, costing around Rs20,000 each, can travel 40-50 km on a single charge, said Sulajja Firodia Motwani, MD, Kinetic Motor, which manufactured the first batch of two dozen.
The rickshaw, complete with front and rear shock-absorbers, can be charged in less than six hours.
According to research done prior to designing the new vehicle, nearly all of the three lakh or so postmen cover around 30 km per day.
The rickshaw is an offshoot of the two-year-old Soleckshaw project by the CMERI, one of the 37 laboratories under the Council of Industrial and Scientific Research, the apex academic and technical research organisation under the central government.
The CMERI had come up with the concept of replacing the human-driven cycle-rickshaw by an electric one in 2008. The original design also had a solar panel array on the roof of the rickshaw, but turned out to be too cumbersome, heavy and expensive. Around 200 modified Solekshaws are plying the roads, including some in Delhi, according to Dr Gautam Biswas, director, CMERI.
“It has so far mostly been done with the help of NGOs,” Biswas said. “This is the first time we are getting the government involved.”
Though named after the sun, the Soleckshaws ferrying passengers are charged using ‘normal’ electricity, Biswas added, as solar installations can be costly.
“We realised that solar charging stations are better suited for places where [grid] electricity is not available,” he said, adding that a 1,900 watt solar charging station — enough for 10 rickshaws — costs around Rs4 lakh to set up.
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