New Delhi, May 5 -- Uber has called off discussions to transition about 5,000 electric cars of Gensol Engineering Ltd-owned BluSmart to its platform, according totwo people aware of the development. The talks were called off due to concerns over the price being asked for the cars. Talks had started as part of BluSmart's plan to revive operations of its cabs. BluSmart was supposed to act as a fleet partner for Uber. "Uber has now withdrawn its interest," one of the people cited above said on the condition of anonymity. "Its main concern was the depreciation of cars in the BluSmart fleet. The price being asked for the transition did not meet its valuation." This is the second setback for the embattled Anmol Jaggi-founded BluSmart in as many months. Last month, a Rs.315-crore transaction to sell 2,997 cars to Chennai-based Refex Group, at a value of Rs.10.5 lakh per car, was cancelled. According to the person mentioned above, an early assessment of BluSmart's fleet was done by Uber's team after the talks started in March. A key concern was that electric vehicles (EVs) have high depreciation, which was not accounted for in the price being asked by BluSmart, the person cited above said. Mint could not independently verify the price being asked by BluSmart. Earlier,Mintreported based on data from used car marketplace players such as Cars24 and Spinny that EVs lose value quicker than traditional fuel vehicles. According to Cars24, popular internal combustion engine (ICE) models can retain 50% of their value in three to five years, unlike EVs. Spinny's observations suggested that old EV models can have price gaps as high as 6% with old ICE models. Another concern that emerged during the talks was the fact that a large share of Gensol-owned Blusmart fleet of about 5,000 cars was hypothecated with lenders Power Finance Corporation (PFC) and Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (Ireda). Gensol had taken loans of over Rs.663 crore from these lenders to buy the cars, which were then-leased to BluSmart. Queries emailed on Friday to Uber and BluSmart remained unanswered till press time....