India's public EV charging network has expanded rapidly. That is good news. The more difficult question now is whether those chargers are being used enough.
As we mark World EV Day, here are a few thoughts from my own experience in the Indian EV charging ecosystem, and from charging markets around the world.
Low utilisation is one of the biggest challenges the industry faces. There are several reasons for it. But one factor stands above the rest.
Location is the Single Biggest Factor
A charger cannot be installed simply because land is available, a host is willing to provide space, or an electricity connection happens to be nearby. A charging station is a longterm infrastructure commitment. Once deployed, it is not easy to move.
The network planner has to look deeper. Is the site on the natural traffic flow? Is entry and exit easy? Is it visible and safe? Can a driver comfortably spend 20 or 30 minutes there? Is there a clean washroom, a place for tea or a meal, somewhere reasonably comfortable to sit?
For a petrol pump, these are add-ons. For charging, they are the product. If a customer is going to spend half an hour at a site, the experience around the charger becomes part of what he is paying for.
A good charging location is not merely a place where a charger can be installed. It is a place where the driver naturally wants to stop.
I have seen this play out in a way that makes the point better than any argument can. A well-known auto OEM installed an excellent charging station just outside Mumbai on the Mumbai–Ahmedabad highway. Good equipment, good build quality, a strong brand behind it. It has struggled for users. The station did everything right except answer the one question that matters most: why would a driver stop here?
Don't Put the Charger Where the Journey Starts or Ends
This is the behavioural piece. Operators are naturally drawn to sites close to major cities because traffic density is high. But high traffic does not mean high charging demand.
Consider a charger 20 or 30 kilometres after someone leaves Mumbai. Most private EV owners with home charging will start the journey with a full or nearly full battery. They have little reason to stop that early. The same logic applies at the other end - if the destination is close, drivers push through rather than stop for 20 minutes.
This is very likely a part of what happened on the Mumbai–Ahmedabad stretch. A driver leaving Mumbai with a full battery has no reason to charge 30 km in. The site may be excellent. The point in the journey is wrong.
The productive location usually sits in the natural middle of the journey, where meaningful battery depletion coincides with the driver's own need for a break. That is where vehicle behaviour and human behaviour intersect.
From Coverage to Consumption
In the first phase of the market, we built for coverage rather than consumption - understandably so. India needed chargers - dots on the map, and customers needed confidence that inter-city EV travel was possible.
But in some cases, we answered, "where can we put a charger" before asking "how much energy will actually be consumed here." Those are very different questions. A charger can look excellent on a network map and still be commercially weak, with impressive traffic counts but little relevant EV traffic passing through.
The next phase has to move from coverage to consumption. Network density matters. Energy throughput matters more.
Charger Size Should Match the Site, Not the Ambition
A 60-kW charger and a 180-kW charger can both report 5 percent utilisation, but the energy dispensed is very different - roughly 72 kWh a day against 216 kWh at the same theoretical utilisation. Utilisation percentage alone tells only part of the story.
More importantly, oversizing weakens the business case. A 180 kW or 240 kW charger makes sense only where vehicle mix, traffic, and dwell time justify it. If most cars can accept only a fraction of that power, the operator is paying for capacity nobody uses. The aim isn't to install the biggest charger - it’s to install the right charger for the right location.
ENGINEER THE UTILISATION, DON'T WAIT FOR IT
Engineer the Utilisation, Don't Wait for It
Utilisation cannot always be left to chance. Operators should actively build a base load - taxi fleets, bus operators, logistics companies, employee transport - by selling charging capacity in bulk rather than waiting entirely for retail traffic.
The contrast with the OEM example above played out almost in parallel, on the Nashik highway. A CPO tied up with taxi operators there and offered a discounted rate for electrons purchased in bulk. Utilisation is no longer a concern at that site. Same broad geography, same basic proposition - highway charging near a metro - but one operator waited for traffic to arrive, and the other went and signed it up in advance.
The fleet gets preferential pricing for committing volume. The operator gets predictable, contracted consumption instead of hoping retail traffic shows up. That changes site economics on day one.
So, the question isn't only "where can I install a charger." It's also "who can I get to commit to using it." Especially in the early years, utilisation has to be engineered, not assumed.
Uptime is a Commercial Metric, Not an Operations One
Even an excellent location cannot compensate for an unreliable charger. EV users quickly learn which chargers are dependable and increasingly plan journeys around the ones they trust. A charger doesn't have to fail every time to lose customers - it only has to fail often enough for drivers to stop trusting it.
A charger that works reliably becomes part of an EV driver's mental route map. One that works only when you're lucky eventually disappears from it. Reliability doesn't just protect utilisation - it creates it.
The Next Battle is Productivity
India will need many more chargers as EV penetration grows. Low utilisation today is not an argument against expansion. But the nature of expansion has to change.
The first phase was about putting chargers on the map. The next has to be about making those chargers productive - better locations, better sizing, better uptime, fleet anchoring where possible, and far more discipline before capex is committed.
The charger can be upgraded later. The tariff can be revised. But a bad location remains a bad location - and in this business, that one decision can determine utilisation for years. Two highways an hour apart just proved it both ways.
Sandeep Bangia is a senior professional in the corporate sector. All views expressed are the author's own.