The project focuses on designing and developing electrical powertrain systems for public transportation buses locally, ITIDA announced on Wednesday.

The funding comes in light of Egypt’s plans to use the largest possible percentage of local components in the automotive sector, reduce CO2 emissions, and have more sustainable and green public transportation means, which will positively impact the overall environment and air quality, said ITIDA.

The project, which comes under the umbrella of ITIDA’s Information Technology Academia collaboration (ITAC), and Egypt Makes Electronics (EME) initiatives, aims to support the innovation flow between the IT industry and academia and develop electrical powertrain systems for city buses.

ITIDA explained that the fund will be delivered over the project's lifetime of 18 months, during which Brightskies and Alexandria University will be submitting a demo of an electrical powertrain system that can be further developed to a market-ready product.

“One of ITIDA’s key mandates is to bring value to Egyptian ICT Industry by fostering collaboration between industry and academia… to put Egyptian ICT companies in a leading position in the ICT market, both locally and internationally,” said Amr Mahfouz, CEO of ITIDA.

Khaled El-Amrawi, chief executive officer of Brightskies, said the project is meant to stir Egypt towards green energy for public transportation.

Brightskies’ role will focus on developing an automotive-grade battery pack in compliance with the UNECE’s Sustainable Transport Division regulation for approval of vehicles with regards to the electric powertrain and ISO 26262 standard for automotive functional safety, according to ITIDA.

ITIDA also clarified that the battery pack will be developed for a fully electric city bus with a range of up to 300KM on a single charge, adding that the city bus top speed will be 90km/h and will accommodate up to 52 passengers.

Brightskies will also develop all the powertrain electronics and control units, which are required to interface with the battery and the electrical motor with vehicle network and sensors, according to ITIDA.

Alexandria University will design the chassis for the converted bus to maintain the best vehicle dynamics, as well as converting in the mechanical engineering systems to different systems such as brakes, which will need to be compatible with the new electrical powertrain.