India has committed to net zero by 2070, and road transport will have to do a significant share of the work. EVs have the benefit of zero tailpipe emissions, but their actual climate benefit is contingent on the source of the electricity. For the buyer, the issue is far simpler: will the charger work when I get there and at a price that is desirable?
Counting installed chargers tells us nothing unless the network is actually serving the people and businesses that use it and is in a position to earn its keep.
Demand is Already Moving
The IEEFA has annual EV sales at around 50k in 2016 and some 2.5m in FY26. In FY26, EVs accounted for 8.26% of all vehicles sold and around 12.7% in July 2026. India has now passed the 10m mark in registered EVs.
The CAFE III rules (announced in September 2026) are expected to come into force from April 2027 to March 2032 and will impose increasingly stringent fleet average fuel economy requirements on passenger cars. BEVS will be treated very favourably under the rules. There's every incentive for the manufacturers to go electric. The consumer will, of course, make their decision on the purchase based on how well the charging infrastructure is going to work for them rather than on the car itself.
Beyond Installation Numbers
By July 2026, India had 52,718 public charging stations for over 10 million EVs (that's one station for every 190 vehicles approximately). The figure doesn't really reflect the actual differences, though. Two-wheelers, cars, and buses all have different charging requirements, and the stations themselves vary enormously in terms of capacity and usage.
The government has stepped in with PM E-DRIVE, setting aside ₹2,000 crore for public charging. By May 2026, proposals worth ₹503.86 crore had been cleared for 4,874 chargers. The gap is enormous. Under its assumed funding scenario, IEEFA has estimated that the allocation would only be able to fund less than 2% of the 1.32 million public chargers that are projected to be required by 2030. The rest will have to be funded by private capital, utilities, property owners and specialist operators.
Reliability is Where Trust is Won
IEEFA’s September 2026 briefing on the charging experience lists the issues that remain: unreliable chargers, poor interoperability, high public charging costs, limited access to home charging and delays in grid connections. Anyone who's driven to a charger that the app said was available only to find it dead will know how quickly your confidence evaporates.
Public support should go to the chargers that actually perform rather than the chargers that just exist. Verified uptime, faster sessions and prompt maintenance will do far more to drive adoption than a higher charger count. The proposed Unified Bharat eCharge initiative (aiming to make discovery, access and payment seamless across all operators) is a sensible thing to do. The impact of that initiative will be down to how well it is implemented and how many operators actually join up.
Investors Need Returns, and Users Need Fair Price
A charger that's reliable but unaffordable serves no one, and one that's a money-bleeder for the operator serves no one either. Operators pay for the equipment, the land, the grid connection, the software and the ongoing maintenance. Grid upgrades can be a very significant part of the set-up cost and with low usage in the early years the returns are very difficult to predict.
IEEFA has suggested a cut in the GST on public charging from 18% to 5% (the rate on the EV itself) and the creation of concessional finance for grid upgrades. These are recommendations, not current concessions, but again they highlight the right issue. The economics of charging are very much dependent on the cost of the grid connection and the cost of running the grid.
A charging station in the wrong place adds one to the national total but may well never get sufficient usage to justify its cost. For the operators and the investors, it will be as much about utilisation as it is about scale. The policy makers are in a tougher position in that they have to decide where to put the infrastructure as demand emerges, without simply leaving behind infrastructure that will sit idle.
Cleaner Power has to be Part of the Plan
India’s non-fossil installed capacity stood at 300.5 GW as at 31st July 2026 (over 54% of the total), but non-fossil sources accounted for a smaller proportion of the electricity generated in FY26. This is because the various technologies have different levels of utilisation.
Charging infrastructure can deliver greater emissions reductions when charging coincides with strong renewable generation, particularly solar power during the day. Time-of-use tariffs and smart charging can be used to move the load away from peak times and assist in balancing the grid, though the actual outcomes will be very much dependent on the local grid capacity.
Heavy goods vehicles require special attention as the clustering of chargers at depots and logistics hubs can place a significant strain on the local network. Charging expansion cannot be planned in isolation from grid readiness.
Freight is the Harder Climb
On 7th September 2026, NITI Aayog’s e-FAST India initiative launched the Platform for Aggregating Clean Transport (PACT) and the Zero Emission Truck Marketplace, uniting the various stakeholders (manufacturers, logistics companies, charging operators and financiers). Electric freight is still very small, though NITI Aayog figures show the number of vehicles deployed going up from 201 in FY25 to 826 in FY26.
The truck price is only one element of the business case. Fragmented operations, financing costs, and the availability of charging on the freight corridors are all equally important. The electric trucks also require chargers that are designed for much larger batteries, effective operating schedules, and much higher power loads than can be supported by the passenger vehicle infrastructure.
Fleet owners, charging firms, utilities and highway authorities will all have to plan together. Chargers that don't match the routes and schedules will be sitting idle. For freight, coordinated infrastructure planning will be just as important as better vehicle technology.
The Road to 2070
Net zero will come about through the cumulative effect of stakeholders’ decisions: a family buying an electric car, a fleet owner retiring a diesel truck, a housing society allowing residents to charge at home, a logistics company attempting to go electric with their freight. All of those become a lot easier when charging is available, reliable, and affordable.
India has made genuine headway on EV sales, on regulation and on renewable capacity. The next step is to integrate all of those elements into a charging network that is user-centric, underpinned by sound investment and which is realistic in terms of the grid.
Anamika Singh is the Co-founder of Earthtron EV. Views expressed are the author's own.