"Oh shit" is so 2010. The new anthem of urban angst is “low battery”.
I felt a whole new dimension of it last week, riding around in a Mahindra eVerito. After about an hour on Delhi roads, the car started flashing the warning in bright red. I knew I was safe: It was the middle of the day, and the whole point of the ride, which had been arranged by the Finnish company Fortum, was to experience the electric car’s charging process. Still, the creeping sense of unease was hard to shake off.
Presently, we steered down to Scope Complex on Lodhi Road, which houses a phalanx of government offices. In a parking lot inside the complex, two electric-vehicle (EV) charging stations have been set up, one by Fortum and the other by Gurugram-based Exicom Power Solutions. We plugged the eVerito into the self-service Fortum Charge & Drive public network. The LED indicator at the charging point turned blue, meaning occupied.
Having thus satisfied ourselves with the colour of relief, we took shelter in the National Thermal Power Corporation building next door.
Then, we waited.
When dead-dino fuel meets the future: India’s rocky relationship with EVs
Fortum came to India in 2012. Since then, it has punctuated India’s sparse EV-charging landscape with two AC smart-charging stations in Delhi and four in Hyderabad (with two more in the works).
For the latter, it’s piggybacking on the existing infrastructure owned by the country’s largest fossil-fuel marketer, Indian Oil.
“Fortum will set up charging stations at 50 retail outlets of Indian Oil on an exclusive basis in Hyderabad. Each station will be [powered by] DC-type fast chargers of 10kWh or 12kWh capacity,” says SSV Ramakumar, director (R&D) and board member, Indian Oil.
“The Indian market is different from the Nordic and European markets,” says Awadhesh Kumar Jha, who leads Charge & Drive at Fortum India. “What we have observed is that Indian customers appreciate the quality of service (read: the self-service culture in vogue in the West will require significant customer education to take off in India). We are deploying Made in India chargers in our network. On our app, our customers can locate the chargers and their availability as well as pricing details. After charging their car, they can pay digitally.”
Pune-based PlugInIndia started out in the charging-station business a year after Fortum’s entry. In collaboration with Tata Power, the company has set up a charging point at Vikhroli, an office hub in Mumbai. Another charger has been installed at Trinetri Petrol Pump in the hill town of Lonavla, serving holidaymakers as well as commuters on the busy Mumbai-Pune route.
What these companies are doing is a very early precursor to the ultimate EV dream: Imagine the roadside chai stall or dhaba on your drive up your vacation spot or on a highway no longer serves you just a bowl of masala Maggi and ginger tea, but also a plug point to charge your car.
But before that utopia, there’s reality.
EVs have had an on-again, off-again relationship with India, marked by extremes. In 2017, the government decided to turn the country into an EV-only market by 2030, sparking laudatory coverage in the global media. However, it was a matter of months before the government had to walk back its aggressive stance and clarify that there were no such plans.
All conversations on the sluggish uptake of EVs have been dominated by a chicken-and-egg problem: Whither the charging infrastructure to drive your car in peace? Meanwhile, charging-station operators have been anxious about putting the cart before the horse, seeing the low demand for EVs. We wrote about the arduous journey ahead for India’s EV sector here and here.
Given all this, what is the future of the charging-station business in India?
The mechanics of charging stations
Charging stations can follow one of two models.
Smart charging: This is the model commercial charging stations follow. The EV and the charging station communicate the charging requirement between themselves without human interference. The user needs to flash an RFID code at a scanner installed in the station to begin charging. The time needed for charging depends on the type of charger used.
AC (slow charging): 6-10 hours for a car, one hour for a two-wheeler.
DC (fast charging): 50%-60% charge in an hour for a car.
“The present fleet of cars being manufactured in India are sub-100V systems, which can be charged using 10kW-15kW chargers in DC fast mode, whereas they can be charged at home or at the workplace using a 15 Amp socket in the AC mode. High-voltage-system cars would require higher-capacity chargers both in DC and AC mode,” says Jha.
Community charging: Community charging stations are set up by EV users themselves. Their services can be paid for or free.
On its website, PlugInIndia, which helps set up community charging stations, explains: “… companies and the government can only do so much when it comes to installing charging stations. The beauty of an electric vehicle is that any home/business/hotel can install EV charging stations. The idea is for businesses/resorts/vacation homes, etc., which are at a distance of 40km-70km around cities, to set up normal 15Amp charging stations.”
Anyone can set up a community charging station and pin it on PlugInIndia’s app, RE:CHARGE India. The company says so far are a little over 200 community charging stations have been set up in India.
“The good part about going to these stations is you get to meet interesting people who are also interested in EVs,” says a PlugInIndia spokesperson.
Locations such as shopping malls, restaurants, offices, stadiums, underground or multi-level parking lots, movie theatres, hotels, and airports, where there is an unhindered supply of power along with ample parking space, are suitable for setting up charging stations.
“All parking lots should have a minimum 20% of their space earmarked for charging stations,” says Jha. “The earmarked spaces should be given free of cost to potential charging-service providers initially, for a couple of years. Alternatively, the government can adopt the Transport for London (TfL) model, where TfL secured the sites and provided upgraded electricity-grid infrastructure.” A Mahindra eVerito at a Fortum charging station in Lodhi Road, Delhi; photo by Kanika SaxenaThe economics of charging
For commercial players, scaling the business will be a long grind. Hearteningly, the early movers don’t seem worried about making money just yet. Fortum, for instance, is offering free charging to EV owners. It wants to develop the market first and the revenue model later.
PlugInIndia says the cost of charging at its stations could range between INR50 and INR75 per hour. Some of PlugInIndia’s stations are powered by solar energy and offer free charging. One such station has been set up at Wai, on the way to the hill station of Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra.
What does the economics of charging look like?
The cost of setting up a charging station varies based on the type of power supply. Whereas an AC smart-charging point could cost roughly between INR30,000 and INR1,50,000, a DC smart-charging point could require an outlay of INR3 lakh-INR9 lakh.
For users, EV charging is barely a pinch compared with conventional fuel.
In Delhi, for instance, the cost of electricity is INR1.45/unit. This means to charge an EV, for example the Mahindra E2O, which requires 10 units to completely juice up its 10kWh battery, the total cost of electricity would be a paltry INR14.50. (In comparison, the Tesla Model S P100D has a 100kWh battery. So, to charge that car in Delhi, the electricity cost would be INR145. Still a bargain compared with gas.)
But power is only one variable in price calculations. The other variable is time.
The amount of time taken to completely charge an EV varies from five to seven hours. In an hour, a car charges about 24% using slow AC chargers, which can last through a 20km drive. It takes about four hours to charge up to 80%-85%. The remaining part of the battery takes about two hours to charge. This is how batteries work, and this is where the price calculation gets tricky.
The charging process, Jha explains, doesn’t involve a simple sale of power but a full suite of value-added services. Some the cost heads that get loaded up as a result are
The cost of equipment to keep the car safe during charging
The cost of converter for DC charging and connectors
The cost of space for parking the car during charging
The cost of beaming real-time charging-station data (location, occupancy, rates, etc.)
“You don’t bring your EV to a charging station to buy electricity but to get its battery charged in a safe and reliable manner, and to learn about the condition of the battery from the diagnostic tools available at the station,” Jha says. It’s a full package — not the stop-fill-go transaction we are used to at conventional fuel pumps.
Darkness before dawn?
To cynics, all that might sound like bells and whistles, even as the EV market grapples with fundamental problems. The lack of infrastructure, coupled with the limited range and high price of EVs, has long stymied the market’s potential.
The government’s one-step forward, two-steps back attitude hasn’t helped.
“The adoption of EVs in the Nordic countries, particularly in Norway, was initiated through government support,” Jha says. “That helped create demand for EVs, which in turn imparted a push to the development of public charging infrastructure. In India, the government has indicated that the sector will not be subsidy-driven. That throws its own interesting challenges.
“In the long term, the industry could be more sustainable if OEMs are able to reduce the cost of EVs in the initial years. In principle, support from the government is required till the time cost of battery EVs comes on a par with ICE vehicles. However, we understand from media reports that the government is contemplating withdrawing subsidy to individual and fleet operators. If that is true, this will be a big setback to EV adoption in India.”
A few state governments have come up with their own policies and schemes to enable ease of business for EV-infrastructure providers — Telangana, for instance, explaining the emergence of state capital Hyderabad as an early adopter. But a huge amount of work still needs to be done.
“The government of India has announced an amendment to the Electricity Act 2003, according to which no separate licence is required for charging stations and charging would be treated as service, not sale of electricity,” says Ramakumar of Indian Oil.
“However, respective state governments are yet to issue any policy guidelines. The EV policy of the Telangana government is still in a draft stage and yet to be announced. There is no clarity on the electricity tariff applicable to EV charging. There are different standards for EV chargers. The government is yet to announce standards to be adopted by EV manufacturers to bring uniformity in charging infrastructure.”
Red to green
Our car stayed docked to the charging point for about an hour, good enough to reach its next destination. If the wait to fully charge your car bores you, you can choose to stop any time by pressing a button on the app.
It’s a nifty feature for users, but cheerleaders of EVs in India will hope that the powers that be don’t pull the plug midway.
(Graphic by Ankita Mehrotra)
I felt a whole new dimension of it last week, riding around in a Mahindra eVerito. After about an hour on Delhi roads, the car started flashing the warning in bright red. I knew I was safe: It was the middle of the day, and the whole point of the ride, which had been arranged by the Finnish company Fortum, was to experience the electric car’s charging process. Still, the creeping sense of unease was hard to shake off.
Presently, we steered down to Scope Complex on Lodhi Road, which houses a phalanx of government offices. In a parking lot inside the complex, two electric-vehicle (EV) charging stations have been set up, one by Fortum and the other by Gurugram-based Exicom Power Solutions. We plugged the eVerito into the self-service Fortum Charge & Drive public network. The LED indicator at the charging point turned blue, meaning occupied.
Having thus satisfied ourselves with the colour of relief, we took shelter in the National Thermal Power Corporation building next door.
Then, we waited.
When dead-dino fuel meets the future: India’s rocky relationship with EVs
Fortum came to India in 2012. Since then, it has punctuated India’s sparse EV-charging landscape with two AC smart-charging stations in Delhi and four in Hyderabad (with two more in the works).
For the latter, it’s piggybacking on the existing infrastructure owned by the country’s largest fossil-fuel marketer, Indian Oil.
“Fortum will set up charging stations at 50 retail outlets of Indian Oil on an exclusive basis in Hyderabad. Each station will be [powered by] DC-type fast chargers of 10kWh or 12kWh capacity,” says SSV Ramakumar, director (R&D) and board member, Indian Oil.
“The Indian market is different from the Nordic and European markets,” says Awadhesh Kumar Jha, who leads Charge & Drive at Fortum India. “What we have observed is that Indian customers appreciate the quality of service (read: the self-service culture in vogue in the West will require significant customer education to take off in India). We are deploying Made in India chargers in our network. On our app, our customers can locate the chargers and their availability as well as pricing details. After charging their car, they can pay digitally.”
Pune-based PlugInIndia started out in the charging-station business a year after Fortum’s entry. In collaboration with Tata Power, the company has set up a charging point at Vikhroli, an office hub in Mumbai. Another charger has been installed at Trinetri Petrol Pump in the hill town of Lonavla, serving holidaymakers as well as commuters on the busy Mumbai-Pune route.
What these companies are doing is a very early precursor to the ultimate EV dream: Imagine the roadside chai stall or dhaba on your drive up your vacation spot or on a highway no longer serves you just a bowl of masala Maggi and ginger tea, but also a plug point to charge your car.
But before that utopia, there’s reality.
EVs have had an on-again, off-again relationship with India, marked by extremes. In 2017, the government decided to turn the country into an EV-only market by 2030, sparking laudatory coverage in the global media. However, it was a matter of months before the government had to walk back its aggressive stance and clarify that there were no such plans.
All conversations on the sluggish uptake of EVs have been dominated by a chicken-and-egg problem: Whither the charging infrastructure to drive your car in peace? Meanwhile, charging-station operators have been anxious about putting the cart before the horse, seeing the low demand for EVs. We wrote about the arduous journey ahead for India’s EV sector here and here.
Given all this, what is the future of the charging-station business in India?
The mechanics of charging stations
Charging stations can follow one of two models.
Smart charging: This is the model commercial charging stations follow. The EV and the charging station communicate the charging requirement between themselves without human interference. The user needs to flash an RFID code at a scanner installed in the station to begin charging. The time needed for charging depends on the type of charger used.
AC (slow charging): 6-10 hours for a car, one hour for a two-wheeler.
DC (fast charging): 50%-60% charge in an hour for a car.
“The present fleet of cars being manufactured in India are sub-100V systems, which can be charged using 10kW-15kW chargers in DC fast mode, whereas they can be charged at home or at the workplace using a 15 Amp socket in the AC mode. High-voltage-system cars would require higher-capacity chargers both in DC and AC mode,” says Jha.
Community charging: Community charging stations are set up by EV users themselves. Their services can be paid for or free.
On its website, PlugInIndia, which helps set up community charging stations, explains: “… companies and the government can only do so much when it comes to installing charging stations. The beauty of an electric vehicle is that any home/business/hotel can install EV charging stations. The idea is for businesses/resorts/vacation homes, etc., which are at a distance of 40km-70km around cities, to set up normal 15Amp charging stations.”
Anyone can set up a community charging station and pin it on PlugInIndia’s app, RE:CHARGE India. The company says so far are a little over 200 community charging stations have been set up in India.
“The good part about going to these stations is you get to meet interesting people who are also interested in EVs,” says a PlugInIndia spokesperson.
Locations such as shopping malls, restaurants, offices, stadiums, underground or multi-level parking lots, movie theatres, hotels, and airports, where there is an unhindered supply of power along with ample parking space, are suitable for setting up charging stations.
“All parking lots should have a minimum 20% of their space earmarked for charging stations,” says Jha. “The earmarked spaces should be given free of cost to potential charging-service providers initially, for a couple of years. Alternatively, the government can adopt the Transport for London (TfL) model, where TfL secured the sites and provided upgraded electricity-grid infrastructure.” A Mahindra eVerito at a Fortum charging station in Lodhi Road, Delhi; photo by Kanika SaxenaThe economics of charging
For commercial players, scaling the business will be a long grind. Hearteningly, the early movers don’t seem worried about making money just yet. Fortum, for instance, is offering free charging to EV owners. It wants to develop the market first and the revenue model later.
PlugInIndia says the cost of charging at its stations could range between INR50 and INR75 per hour. Some of PlugInIndia’s stations are powered by solar energy and offer free charging. One such station has been set up at Wai, on the way to the hill station of Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra.
What does the economics of charging look like?
The cost of setting up a charging station varies based on the type of power supply. Whereas an AC smart-charging point could cost roughly between INR30,000 and INR1,50,000, a DC smart-charging point could require an outlay of INR3 lakh-INR9 lakh.
For users, EV charging is barely a pinch compared with conventional fuel.
In Delhi, for instance, the cost of electricity is INR1.45/unit. This means to charge an EV, for example the Mahindra E2O, which requires 10 units to completely juice up its 10kWh battery, the total cost of electricity would be a paltry INR14.50. (In comparison, the Tesla Model S P100D has a 100kWh battery. So, to charge that car in Delhi, the electricity cost would be INR145. Still a bargain compared with gas.)
But power is only one variable in price calculations. The other variable is time.
The amount of time taken to completely charge an EV varies from five to seven hours. In an hour, a car charges about 24% using slow AC chargers, which can last through a 20km drive. It takes about four hours to charge up to 80%-85%. The remaining part of the battery takes about two hours to charge. This is how batteries work, and this is where the price calculation gets tricky.
The charging process, Jha explains, doesn’t involve a simple sale of power but a full suite of value-added services. Some the cost heads that get loaded up as a result are
The cost of equipment to keep the car safe during charging
The cost of converter for DC charging and connectors
The cost of space for parking the car during charging
The cost of beaming real-time charging-station data (location, occupancy, rates, etc.)
“You don’t bring your EV to a charging station to buy electricity but to get its battery charged in a safe and reliable manner, and to learn about the condition of the battery from the diagnostic tools available at the station,” Jha says. It’s a full package — not the stop-fill-go transaction we are used to at conventional fuel pumps.
Darkness before dawn?
To cynics, all that might sound like bells and whistles, even as the EV market grapples with fundamental problems. The lack of infrastructure, coupled with the limited range and high price of EVs, has long stymied the market’s potential.
The government’s one-step forward, two-steps back attitude hasn’t helped.
“The adoption of EVs in the Nordic countries, particularly in Norway, was initiated through government support,” Jha says. “That helped create demand for EVs, which in turn imparted a push to the development of public charging infrastructure. In India, the government has indicated that the sector will not be subsidy-driven. That throws its own interesting challenges.
“In the long term, the industry could be more sustainable if OEMs are able to reduce the cost of EVs in the initial years. In principle, support from the government is required till the time cost of battery EVs comes on a par with ICE vehicles. However, we understand from media reports that the government is contemplating withdrawing subsidy to individual and fleet operators. If that is true, this will be a big setback to EV adoption in India.”
A few state governments have come up with their own policies and schemes to enable ease of business for EV-infrastructure providers — Telangana, for instance, explaining the emergence of state capital Hyderabad as an early adopter. But a huge amount of work still needs to be done.
“The government of India has announced an amendment to the Electricity Act 2003, according to which no separate licence is required for charging stations and charging would be treated as service, not sale of electricity,” says Ramakumar of Indian Oil.
“However, respective state governments are yet to issue any policy guidelines. The EV policy of the Telangana government is still in a draft stage and yet to be announced. There is no clarity on the electricity tariff applicable to EV charging. There are different standards for EV chargers. The government is yet to announce standards to be adopted by EV manufacturers to bring uniformity in charging infrastructure.”
Red to green
Our car stayed docked to the charging point for about an hour, good enough to reach its next destination. If the wait to fully charge your car bores you, you can choose to stop any time by pressing a button on the app.
It’s a nifty feature for users, but cheerleaders of EVs in India will hope that the powers that be don’t pull the plug midway.
(Graphic by Ankita Mehrotra)
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