Showroom conversations about electric cars are wonderfully calm. The salesperson quotes certified range, demonstrates the touchscreen and points to colourful charging pins on a map. The anxiety begins later, when a family reaches a listed highway charger and discovers a dark screen, a locked gate or a restaurant employee who insists the machine never existed.
A detailed Team-BHP account of an electric drive between Hyderabad and Chennai described “ghost” charging locations and a substantial detour to find working equipment. Another owner’s Delhi-Mussoorie journey in an MG ZS EV showed that long-distance travel is workable, while still requiring preparation and backup options. Together they capture the real transition: EV touring is possible, but confidence remains manually assembled by the driver.
A map pin is not infrastructure
Charging-network announcements usually count installed points. Drivers need a different statistic: the probability that a compatible charger will work on arrival. A station with two connectors, one broken and one occupied, is not two units of infrastructure. A high-power charger derated by heat or grid limitations is not delivering its advertised capability.
Operators should publish uptime, successful-session rates, average delivered power and repair times for every site. The data should be independently auditable and visible inside navigation systems. If airlines can report punctuality and telecom companies can publish coverage, charging operators can disclose whether their machines function.
Ghost listings are especially damaging because they corrupt route planning. A stale pin may look harmless to an office-bound app designer; to a driver with a low battery at night, it is a serious failure. Operators and mapping platforms need automatic verification, recent user confirmation and rapid removal of invalid sites.
I would also require prominent status timestamps. “Available” should mean the charger communicated successfully within minutes, not that it once appeared in a database. The driver should see connector type, actual power, pricing, access hours, amenities and whether another vehicle is charging.
Too many apps, too little accountability
India’s charging ecosystem has reproduced the worst habit of digital commerce: every operator wants an account, wallet and app. A driver may need several applications, each requesting personal data and each capable of failing precisely where mobile reception is weak. The physical connector is standardising faster than the payment experience.
Interoperable roaming should allow any major charging app—or a simple card or UPI payment—to start a session. UPI transformed small payments because the user did not need a separate wallet for every shop. Charging should learn the same lesson.
Mandatory wallet balances are particularly indefensible. Drivers should pay for energy consumed, not lend small sums to multiple networks. Prices must be displayed clearly before a session, including parking, time or overstay fees. Receipts should show energy delivered and effective unit cost.
Customer support needs physical competence. A call-centre agent reading restart instructions is of limited use when a connector latch is damaged or a site has lost power. Networks require regional maintenance teams, spare modules and service-level agreements with host locations.
Location quality matters more than raw quantity
A charger beside a clean, open restaurant is more useful than a faster machine behind a closed dealership. Families need lighting, toilets, food and a safe place to wait. Sites must remain accessible beyond business hours and should not be blocked by combustion vehicles or stored furniture.
Highway planning should consider redundancy. A single station every hundred kilometres creates a point of failure; clusters of competing chargers near natural rest stops create resilience. The grid connection, not merely the cabinet, must support peak demand as EV traffic grows.
Urban charging has different requirements. Apartment residents without assigned parking need dependable neighbourhood options, while fleets need high-utilisation hubs. Workplace and destination charging can absorb vehicles for hours at lower power. Policy that treats every charger as interchangeable will misallocate investment.
Two-wheelers and three-wheelers should not be an afterthought. They dominate India’s electric volumes and have different power, parking and turnaround needs. Battery swapping may suit some commercial uses, while home or depot charging suits others. The infrastructure conversation becomes distorted when it imagines only premium car owners on expressways.
What manufacturers owe buyers
Car companies like to say charging belongs to the ecosystem. That excuse is wearing thin. If a manufacturer sells an EV, it should integrate reliable route planning, show live charger status, maintain partnerships and provide emergency support. The ownership experience does not respect corporate boundaries.
Range claims also need clearer context. Highway speed, air-conditioning, elevation, load and temperature alter consumption. A useful route planner should model these factors and recommend arrival buffers. Telling customers that results vary is legally safe but practically lazy.
Battery size is not the only solution. Larger packs increase cost and weight. A smaller-battery car supported by dense, dependable fast charging can be more sustainable and affordable than a vehicle carrying hundreds of kilometres of unused range every day. Infrastructure reliability allows designers to reduce the insurance battery.
Dealers must conduct honest delivery education. Teach owners charging curves, connector etiquette, trip planning and what to do when a station fails. Do not promise that every map pin will work or that certified range will appear in all conditions. Confidence built on candour survives the first difficult journey.
The transition needs boring reliability
I remain bullish on electric mobility. The driving experience suits Indian cities, home charging can be remarkably convenient, and operating costs are attractive for many use cases. Road trips already happen across routes that would have seemed implausible a few years ago. The infrastructure gap is not evidence that EVs are a fraud; it is evidence that deployment has outrun operations.
Government can help through standards, open data and performance-linked support. Subsidies for installing hardware should reserve a portion for maintaining it. Public tenders should penalise chronic downtime. Highway authorities can coordinate power, signage and safe access at rest areas.
Drivers will tolerate a twenty-minute charging stop. They will not tolerate discovering that the stop is fictional. The psychological barrier is uncertainty, not merely range. Once people trust that the next two sites are real, working and accessible, they stop treating every journey as an expedition.
India does not need another triumphant count of charging pins. It needs truthful maps, interoperable payments, maintained hardware and published uptime. The electric transition will be won by boring reliability—the one feature nobody photographs at an auto show and every owner remembers on a dark highway.
