Atlas Bangladesh, the state-owned motorcycle and mishuk manufacturing company is going to start commercial production of environment-friendly battery powered rechargeable three wheelers from April, officials said.
“We are going to launch the new venture focusing our local market and the environment issue as well,” M Saifuzzaman, managing director (MD) of Atlas Bangladesh Ltd told the FE.
The production cost of the new venture will be funded by the government’s resources and the parts of the three wheelers will be locally produced except the engine, he added.
The presence of battery-powered, rechargeable three-wheelers in cities are growing stronger mainly because of the rise in prices of fuel including natural gas, industry sources said.
Earlier a three-wheeler, named BORAC (Battery Operated, Rechargeable Auto Carriage) assembled locally with imported parts by another company, got much popularity in the city.
But now the government has initiated the project of producing three wheeler in the country mainly to save foreign currency which was spent for import, the sources added. Atlas sources said it might be a good substitute for rickshaws in the cities.
According to an estimate, there are one million rickshaws plying across the country, half of them in Dhaka. It is often blamed that rickshaws create traffic congestions and the exhausting physical labour required for pulling a rickshaw is criticised by the human rights groups.
The three-wheeler will be priced within Tk 110,000, the Atlas chief executive said.
“We are hopeful that we can be able to keep the price within the range of Tk 110,000 maintaining our production cost”.
Atlas official sources said each of the vehicles of the three-wheeler will have the speed of around 35-40 kilometres per hour.
source:http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/more.php?news_id=92602
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