Robust charging infra key to achieving India's ambitious EV targets

The Ministry of Heavy Industries has identified 40 cities for electric four-wheeler charging-points with Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Hyderabad leading way, and 40 highway corridors for e-bus transit

The lack of charging stations has long been pinpointed as a brake on the faster growth of the electric-vehicle (EV) market in India. In this context, the government’s plans to provide up to 80 per cent or higher subsidies to the next-generation upstream infrastructure, or charging points, as reported in this newspaper, is an essential response to the problem. According to the report, the Rs 2,000 crore under the PM Electric Drive Revolution in Innovative Vehicle Enhancement (PM E-Drive) scheme, which replaces the earlier subsidy programme, will be spent to support 48,400 fast-charging points for electric two- and three-wheelers, 22,100 points for electric cars, and 1,800 points for electric buses and trucks. The objective is to add 72,300 fast-chargers to the current modest network of 1,300-odd points. The Ministry of Heavy Industries has also identified 40 cities for electric four-wheeler charging-points with Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Hyderabad leading the way, and 40 highway corridors for e-bus transit. Overall, the push could be a game-changer, especially given the unviable ownership economics of battery swapping. The question is whether the programme and its structure will go far enough to meet the ambitious target of a 30 per cent EV market share by 2030.

 

The two key issues are whether the programme can help match this target and the efficiency of the subsidy-disbursement mechanism. One comparison can be drawn from China, the world’s largest EV market. EVs account for over half the market there and they are served by over 3 million public charging-points, the largest such network in the world. In India, EVs are expected to account for about 7.5 per cent of the market in 2025 and are grossly underserviced by the public infrastructure for charging. In that sense, PM E-Drive could make an appreciable difference. However, the key would be how it is implemented. The functioning of the two editions of Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid &) Electric Vehicles, or the FAME scheme, suffered from operational glitches on account of the manner in which manufacturers claimed subsidies.

 

The staggered design of subsidy disbursement under the current scheme has the potential to mire the charging-point business in red tape. Under the scheme, 30 per cent of the subsidy will be released after the tender-award stage, 40 per cent after the fast-charging station is deployed, and the rest after the successful commercial operation of the charging station. These terms may need clarification to avoid confusion over definitions of “deployment” and “successful commercial operation”. The other standard problem of delays over subsidy disbursement, a common complaint of beneficiaries of the FAME scheme, also needs to be avoided if the scheme is to gain traction. While the pitfalls of the earlier scheme need to be avoided to increase the penetration and adoption of EVs, the charging infrastructure bit is perhaps more crucial. While the PM E-Drive initiative aims to boost the penetration of e-buses and e-trucks — a move that is certainly welcome — establishing robust charging infrastructure will be crucial for the broader adoption of EVs, particularly among private vehicles, which dominate Indian roads.