Travelling to work is a hassle in cities, but what if you could sit in an elevated driverless pod and escape the road traffic. While it sounds futuristic, many companies have developed technologies that could make this possible.
Fairwood Group is looking at introducing driverless pods in India as personal rapid transit (PRT) solution and is eyeing multiple cities for a pilot project.
“There are active discussions happening in several States. We have developed proposals for Amritsar, Dehradun, Gurugram, Thiruvananthapuram, Tirupati, Noida, Mumbai, and Delhi. Dehradun is the most advanced, but is politically unsure due to the pending elections,” Ranbir Saran Das, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of Fairwood, told
Fairwood has an exclusive arrangement with UK-based company ULTra for executing the latter’s technology and building projects in several regions of Asia, including India. ULTra is already running these pods at London’s Heathrow airport. Fairwood, however, is yet to bag its first project.
Under this project, small and driverless battery-powered vehicles – with central control system or pods – run on slender, special purpose elevated tracks. The cars – with capacities of seating four-six people – provide on-demand transport at a speed of up to 40 km per hour.
Apart from London, at present, destinations such as Abu Dhabi and South Korea have functional PRT systems run by other companies. Moreover, Metrino is building a test track in New Zealand and SkyTran is doing a project in Israel.
In India, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has announced plans for India’s first pod taxi project in Gurugram. It aims to carry 30,000 passengers in a day and is likely to transform the transport system of the city.
“The tender for Gurugram is likely to be opened very soon. We are one of the bidders,” Das added.
Interestingly, in 2012, Fairwood had announced plans to set up a manufacturing factory in Greater Noida. It had bagged a project in Amritsar to build the PRT solution and the foundation stone was laid. However, the project did not see the light of the day.
“The Amritsar project was awarded twice as there was some objection by an officer regarding the view of the track. We had to go in for a second tender, which we wonWe decided to leave it as it made no financial sense. We were expecting at least 15 per cent ROI but the rate that was offered to us gave an ROI of 2-3 per cent,” he said.
While this experience has not changed the importance of the Indian market for the company, which is looking at over 80 cities in the world, out of which more than half are in India,it has resulted in a significant shift in the company’s strategy.
“We thought we will do Build Operate Transfer (BOT) as it would give an advantage of bringing in money. That has changed after the Amritsar experience. From now on, whoever we work with must have a financial commitment to the project so that it hurts them a little bit also, if the project is cancelled. We now will go in for equity investment, but never without a partner, so that the risk is shared,” Das said.
Indian sites preferredOnce the company bags its first project, it would prefer Greater Noida (Uttar Pradesh), Pantnagar (Uttarakhand) or Manesar (Haryana) for a manufacturing set-up. “But if we get a big project in some State and they want to manufacture it there, we will consider it,” he said, adding that it could also look at India as an export hub.
“We have made proposals to Cairo, Istanbul and Singapore. The idea is to make India an export hub but it is a question of how soon the projects develop. Governments at the moment have not gotten used to the fact that PRT as a transport system also needs support. You get viability gap funding for every other form of transport. If there is like for like treatment for PRT, this industry will boom. It is possible but there isn’t enough money in the private sector to invest,” he added.