The Ministry of Power which recently issued the revised consolidated Guidelines and Standards for EV charging infrastructure on January 14, 2022, has said that it has seen 2.5 times increase in charging stations in 9 mega cities – Surat, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai – the last four months.

The ministry said that government has undertaken multiple initiatives to promote the manufacturing and adoption of electric vehicles in the country. With the considerable expansion in the public EV charging infrastructure, the electric vehicles have started penetrating the Indian market.

The government says it has made 360deg efforts to enhance public charging infrastructure by involving private and public agencies (BEE, EESL, PGCIL and NTPC among others.).

The Ministry of Power (MoP) has planned that charging stations should be in an area of 3x3km grid. At present, India has a total of 1,640 operational public EV chargers of which the 9 mega cities account for approximately 940 stations.

Between October 2021 and January 2022, 678 public EV charging stations were installed in these 9 cities, which was about 2.5 times of the earlier numbers, during the same period, about 180,000 new electric vehicles.

Recently, the Ministry of Power revised these guidelines and standards on January 14, 2022, with the following amendments:

• To provide an affordable tariff chargeable by public EV charging station operators and owners and electric vehicle owners.
• Enable owners of electric vehicles to charge EVs at their residences or offices using their existing electricity connections.
• A revenue sharing model has been suggested for land use to make a public charging station financially viable from an operational perspective.
• Timelines have been prescribed for providing connectivity to the Public Charging Station (PCS) for faster rollout of EV public charging.
• Technical requirements for public charging stations have been elaborated.

Furthermore, Oil Marketing Companies have also announced setting up of 22,000 EV charging stations in prominent cities and on national highways across the country. Out of 22,000 EV charging stations, 10,000 will be installed by Indian Oil; 7,000 by Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), and the rest of 5,000 will be installed by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL). IOCL has already installed 439 EV charging stations and plans to install another 2,000 EV charging stations over the next year. BPCL has installed 52 charging stations, while HPCL has installed 382 charging stations.

The Department of Heavy Industry has recently sanctioned 1,576 Public Charging Stations for 25 Highways and Expressways which shall be located within every 25km of range on both sides of these expressways and highways.