Ask an electric-car salesperson about charging and you will be shown a map. It will contain reassuring dots scattered across cities and highways, each suggesting that electrons wait obediently wherever your battery becomes nervous. What the map does not show is whether the charger is working, occupied, compatible, accessible after midnight or located behind a hotel gate whose guard has never heard of the arrangement.
India’s public network is growing, but the next challenge is not simply adding dots. A recent Autocar India report described rapid expansion alongside very low capacity utilisation. That combination should change the policy conversation. Operators cannot maintain reliable networks indefinitely if equipment earns little, while drivers will not trust EVs if underused equipment becomes neglected. We need useful density and viable economics, not ceremonial installations.
Home charging is the centre, not the backup
Most private EV owners prefer charging at home or work because the car sits there for hours. This is not a weakness in the model; it is the model’s greatest convenience. Petrol-car thinking imagines a weekly trip to a fuel station. EV ownership works best when charging disappears into parking time.
Policy should therefore focus intensely on apartments. New buildings need adequate electrical capacity, cable routes, metering and fire-safety standards. Existing housing societies need clear rules preventing committees from rejecting installations through ignorance or vague fear. Residents should have transparent methods to pay for electricity and common infrastructure without subsidising individual consumption unfairly.
The government’s E-Amrit information on charging infrastructure helps explain the ecosystem, but implementation lives with distribution companies, municipalities, builders and resident associations. A national guideline is only as useful as the electrician, permission process and transformer capacity in a particular neighbourhood.
Public charging has different jobs
Urban fast chargers serve drivers without private parking, taxis, commercial fleets and urgent top-ups. Highway chargers enable intercity travel. Destination chargers at offices, hotels and shopping areas use longer dwell times. Treating all these sites as identical leads to poor placement and misleading totals.
A charger beside a low-traffic government building may satisfy a target while doing little for mobility. A reliable hub near a taxi cluster can operate constantly and support dozens of livelihoods. Corridor chargers require redundancy because a single failed unit can strand travellers. Destination sites may need several slower, cheaper points rather than one expensive fast charger.
Planning should use traffic patterns, vehicle registrations, dwelling time and grid capacity. Operators should share uptime and utilisation data in standard formats, with privacy safeguards. Public support can then reward functioning service instead of hardware installation alone. Paying for a charger that is never maintained is the infrastructure equivalent of inaugurating a road that ends after the ribbon.
Low utilisation is not automatically failure
Infrastructure must sometimes precede demand. Early petrol stations, telecom towers and metro lines were not instantly full. A minimum charging network gives consumers confidence to purchase EVs, and that confidence increases later utilisation. Expecting every new site to be profitable immediately would prevent the transition from starting.
But low use cannot be ignored forever. Operators face land costs, demand charges, maintenance, software, customer support and vandalism. If revenue remains tiny, equipment will degrade or companies will consolidate. Subsidies should bridge an early market gap, not conceal chronically bad locations.
Fleet partnerships can help. Taxis, delivery vehicles and corporate fleets provide predictable demand that anchors a charging hub, while private drivers use spare capacity. Time-based pricing can shift flexible users away from peaks. Amenities and safe access matter, especially for women driving at night. A bright, staffed site with a toilet is infrastructure; a lonely plug behind a shutter is a risk.
Reliability must become visible
Drivers need real-time information about operational status, connector type, power, price and availability. Today, multiple applications create fragmented accounts and inconsistent data. Roaming arrangements should let a driver use different networks through common payment methods. UPI made digital payments ordinary by reducing friction; charging needs a similarly interoperable mindset.
Networks should publish independently verified uptime. A unit that is powered but unable to initiate a session is not operational. Customer-support response times and refund performance should be measured too. The industry’s preferred metric—the number of chargers deployed—says little about the owner’s experience.
Connector reliability and cable condition sound trivial until a family reaches a site with little remaining range. Preventive maintenance must be funded as a core operating cost. Government tenders that favour the lowest installation bid without strong service obligations virtually guarantee future failure.
The grid challenge is local
National electricity generation is not the only constraint. Several fast chargers operating together can create substantial local demand. Distribution transformers, feeders and site connections may require upgrades. Smart charging can schedule vehicles, limit peaks and coordinate with renewable generation, but this requires communication among cars, chargers and utilities.
Tariff design matters. Excessive fixed or demand charges can make lightly used stations uneconomic; very low subsidised tariffs can shift costs unfairly and discourage efficient siting. Regulators need transitional structures that recognise early utilisation while moving toward sustainable pricing.
Battery storage and solar can support some sites, though they are not magic. Solar generation varies, storage adds cost and fast charging demands substantial power. Each location should be engineered around its use rather than decorated with every green technology available in a brochure.
Showroom honesty would improve adoption
Dealers should ask where a buyer parks, how many kilometres she drives, whether her society permits a charger and which intercity routes she uses. Some customers are excellent EV candidates. Others should wait. Selling an EV to somebody with no dependable charging plan creates an angry ambassador.
Range estimates should be presented for highway speed, summer air-conditioning and an ageing battery, not only ideal test cycles. Salespeople should explain charging curves: a car may advertise a high peak rate but sustain it only during part of the session. Owners should know that charging from eighty to one hundred percent can take disproportionately long.
I remain optimistic about India’s EV transition because the fundamental ownership experience can be excellent: smooth driving, low routine energy cost and convenient home charging. But transitions are damaged by pretending constraints do not exist. Public charging is not a marketing accessory. It is a service business requiring land, power, software, maintenance and trust.
Stop celebrating every installed connector equally. Count successful sessions, uptime, repeat users and viable sites. Help apartments make overnight charging normal. Build redundant hubs on real corridors. Let the map show fewer dots if those dots can be trusted. An EV driver does not need the illusion of infinite infrastructure; she needs the next charger to work.
