As a part of cost cut measure and to save environment, the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport  Corporation is presumably looking forward to inducting solar buses into its fleet soon. The new cost effective buses will not only help the over-burdened RTC, but would also help the environment, said RTC sources.

It has to be mentioned here that RTC spends over 1900 crore rupees on 50 crore litres diesel for 20,000 buses. The officials are expecting that by spending less than the above amount, the department can run more buses efficiently. They have reportedly shifted their focus to many countries where solar buses are used for quite sometime.

In solar buses, solar panels would be fixed on the roof of the bus that grab the solar heat, convert it into energy and charge the battery. The life time of these buses would be more than ten years. The sources said that it would cost less than 40,000 rupees to fix solar panels for each bus.

The officials are apparently in a dilemma whether to exclusively bring in solar buses or fix solar panels to the buses that are already running on fuel.

If things work out well, RTC would launch 100 buses initially as an experiment.

So far only developed countries have used solar buses and in case APSRTC inducts these buses, then it would undoubtedly become a big achievement.  (Phani)