This was until he discovered that seven high-speed charging stations had come up along the 600 km Mumbai-Indore highway. “Now I travel regularly on that route, without any range anxiety,” he says.
Like Singh, many people are travelling long distance on their electric vehicles (EVs) as more charging stations are being installed. However, the numbers are still very low.
There are around 2,700 public charging stations with 5,500 connectors in India, but these are concentrated in nine big cities and along highways and expressways. The target is to set up 10,000 public charging stations by 2025. The share of fast chargers —which run on direct current and can power up a car in 35 minutes — is only inching up.
Will the charging infrastructure catch up?
As the sales of electric vehicles pick up, crossing 1 million units in 2022, a host of private players and startups are showing interest in installing high-speed chargers along roads.
Discover the stories of your interest
Charge Zone is a tech-driven EV charging network company, headquartered in Gujarat. “We recently completed the electrification of over 10,000 km of national highways by installing a network of 150 unmanned, app-driven, superfast EV charging points,” says Kartikey Hariyani,founder and CEO, ChargeZone. The new charging points include the ones that power Harjeet Singh’s EV on the Mumbai-Indore highway.
“In 2021, only 500 km were electrified,” says Hariyani. His company has set up 3,000 fast charging points across 815 EV charging stations, serving around 5,000 EVs on a daily basis. He plans to put up 1 million EV charging points by 2030.
The charging points along highways have helped software professional Gaurav Joshi, 37, make a 250 km trip from Mumbai to Shirdi in his electric car.
“I do a road trip to Shirdi very often and now with that stretch having five charging stations, it adds to the ease of driving an EV,” he says.
Statiq, a leading EV charging network in Gurugram, recently bagged a contract from Rajasthan Electronics and Instruments, a joint venture between the Government of India and the Rajasthan government, to supply 253 fast chargers on four highway projects —Agra-Lucknow, Meerut-Gangotri, Chennai-Bellary and Mangaldai-Wakro. The company has several chargers in Jaipur, Beawar, Jaisalmer,Udaipur and Jodhpur.
The electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) space is playing a critical role in the transition from conventional ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles to EVs.
The transition will become smooth only when there is a strong network of charge points, says Aman Rehman, head, government relations and corporate affairs, Statiq, which has raised over `200 crore in a Series-A funding to provide an end-to-end ecosystem for EV charging. By year-end, Statiq aims to have a network of 20,000 charging stations.
Sun Mobility, which provides energy infrastructure and services for EVs, is helping accelerate the pace of mass adoption of electric mobility. It aims to propel the adoption of 1 million EVs by 2025 by addressing some key issues –– high cost, range anxiety, long charging time and lack of infrastructure.
“At present, we have deployed over 240 quick interchange stations, which have the capacity to do 48,000 battery swaps a day.
These are located across 18 cities and have powered over 54 million emission-free kilometres and [facilitated] over 2.7 million battery swaps so far,” says Chetan Maini, cofounder of Sun Mobility.
ElectricPe, an EV charging aggregation platform based in Bengaluru, has also closed a Pre-Series A round of $5 million. Its capital of $8 million will be used to deepen technology investments and scale up operations.
Since its inception in May last year, ElectricPe has built the most dense charging network in Bengaluru, with 10,000 live charging points, says Avinash Sharma, cofounder and CEO, ElectricPe. EKA Mobility, an electric vehicles and technology company based in Pune and a subsidiary of Pinnacle Industries, is collaborating with Shuzlan Energy, Mumbai-based charging infrastructure provider firm, to make accessible to its customers EV charging infrastructure and advanced charging stations.
As Arpit Agarwal, director of Blume Ventures, says, “The EV sector is growing at a rapid pace and consumers are seeking full-stack solutions in one place. Having a trusted, dense network of charging/swapping points to find, use and pay will help increase not only adoption, but also utilisation of charging infrastructure.”
It is not just startups. Big players are also eyeing the opportunity that the EV charging market offers. Tata Power has a pan-India presence with 3,600 public/semi-public charging points across 450 cities. It has set up 450 EZ (pronounced like “easy”) charging points along 350 national highways.
It also has a network of 23,500+ home charger installations (for private use) and 240+ electric bus charging points. Tata Power is deploying fast chargers along highways connecting Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Surat to Silchar. It plans to set up over 5,000 charging points by FY23 and over 25,000 by 2028.
“As we anticipate an increase in the adoption of EVs in India, it is crucial that providers of infra structure like us fast-track the deployment of fast charging points around the country,” says Virendra Goyal — head (EV charging), TATA Power.
Meanwhile, Shell plans to install more than 10,000 public charging points by 2030 in India. These include 100 kW fast chargers to ensure the lowest possible dwell time for four-wheelers.
“We plan to operate half a million EV charge points, including at least 30,000 public charge points, at our mobility stations,” says Sanjay Varkey, director, Shell Mobility.
While the EV charging infrastructure in India is taking massive strides, industry watchers are cautious. There is not enough subsidy, they say. Also, the pace of setting up fast charging stations is still low because EV sales growth is maximum in the two-wheeler and three-wheeler segments which are primarily dependent on home charging.
Most charging stations have come up in captives of big companies and e-car manufacturers in tier-I cities, says Jyoti Gulia, cofounder of JMK Research, an advisory services firm across solar, wind and e-mobility segments.
The government is aware that charging stations need to come up faster and is working towards it. With more four-wheelers being launched with bigger battery size, the need for fast charging will only increase, says Mahua Acharya, MD, Convergence Energy Services (CESL), a subsidiary of Energy Efficiency Services Ltd, a joint venture of PSUs under the Ministry of Power
Late last year, CESL floated a tender for 810 charging stations along 16 highways. It is still work in progress. Another tender for 3,000 land sites for the installation of charging and battery-swapping stations was floated, but only 2,700 got awarded.
There was not much enthusiasm as there was no subsidy, say insiders. Installing a 122 kW charger costs `30 lakh while many private players put up much smaller chargers. The economies of scale don’t work for the government as asset utilisation is about 6%. Randheer Singh, director of electric mobility, NITI Aayog, says, “Currently, public charging infra asset utilisation is just 6-7% and charging infra is capital intensive. Therefore, the creation of public charging infra parallel to the uptick in EVs is better than creating the infra and waiting for EVs to pick up. Having said that, stats indicate that the charging base is growing faster than the EV fleet in India.”
He points out that India saw a 93% growth in public charging connectors in 2021-1H 2022, followed by Italy with a 43% growth.
Shamsher Dewan, senior vice-president and group head, corporate ratings, ICRA, agrees that the EV charging infrastructure business is capital-intensive.
“Even excluding land, the initial upfront cost is approximately `29 lakh, without subsidy. This apart, the operating costs are over `10 lakh yearly, thus making asset utilisation critical,” he says. Battery-swapping is an alternative solution to developing EV charging infrastructure,
especially for commercial applications, he adds, although ensuring interoperability, adequate financing availability and maintaining sufficient battery inventory can prove to be challenging there too.
