Tata Power Company Ltd is planning to invest around ₹70 crores to set up about 1,000 charging points in the National Capital Region (NCR), for Electronic Vehicles (EVs).
Managing Director (MD) of the company, Praveer Sinha, said the company has a total of 21 charging points currently in Mumbai, Delhi, and Hyderabad. It plans to set up a 100 more in Maharashtra apart from the 1,000 new ones.
It plans to befriend the three public Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) – Hindustan Petroleum, Indian Oil, and Bharat Petroleum. With the use of these OMC’s infrastructure, the company would set up the charging stations.
It would also partner other entities, such as malls, metro rail stations, hospitals, hotels, etc, besides own franchisees. Personal and commercial vehicles would both be catered to.
At present, the country has 61,000 petrol/diesel retail outlets, against around 500 EV charging stations.
Sinha said, “Since cars and battery technologies, besides charging standards, are in various stages of evolution, we are looking at an infrastructure which would be future-ready,”
The proposed network would have normal and fast chargers. The time required to charge a vehicle from zero to full charge with a normal charger will be seven hours, whereas with a fast charger it will be 90 minutes.
“Technology adoption and assimilation to suit a local environment has always been our strength and we are working with various technology partners from India and international geographies in the field of charger OEM (original equipment maker),” he added.
“As the largest integrated utility in the country, we are seeing a big shift in the consumer mindset. A new generation of consumers, we call the ‘reflex generation’, are making responsible choices about energy, vehicles, etc,”
By 2030, he said, Delhi alone could require around 300,000 fast chargers, presuming 30 percent EV penetration into an estimated car population of 1 crore (10 million). Meeting this need could call for an investment of $1-1.5 billion (₹7,000 to 11,000 billion). So, the total investment will depend on how deeply EVs penetrate the automotive market, he explained.