September 4: Sundar Yatayat Pvt has brought one more charging station into operation at Chabahil. The other two charging stations are  operational at Sukhedhara and Sitapaila. These charging stations are being used to recharge the battery of electric vehicles in Kathmandu. The charging station was inaugurated by the Secretary at the Ministry of Energy, Water and Irrigation, Dinesh Kumar Ghimire, on Tuesday, September 3.

The company will start operation of seven Chinese manufactured buses from September 9.  The bus with capacity of 40 seats will ply along various routes including Narayan Gopal Chowk-Mediciti Hospital, New Bus Park-Gaushala, Koteshwar- Sallaghari,  and Dungheadda-Attarkhel.

The company has purchased additional 11 electric buses. According to the company, all the purchased buses will arrive in Kathmandu by mid-September.

The company’s chairman Bhes Bahadur Thapa assured that it will operate 18 electric buses in Kathmandu before Dashain. He further said that the existing charging stations have the capacity to charge six buses at a time.

 At the moment, the charging stations are brought in operation for private usage. Furthermore, these super charging stations can charge any model of electric vehicle, said Thapa. According to him, a vehicle takes four to six hours for full charge.

The company has announced to charge minimal bus fare, which will be 20 to 25 percent cheaper than normal bus fare.

Although the service will be available only in Kathmandu in the beginning, the company is planning to operate electric buses in Province 1 within a year. For this, the company has been studying about installing charging stations in Biratnagar and Butwal.