Govt needs to spend about Rs 1.8 lakh crore in electric vehicle infrastructure to meet 2030 target

Key highlights:

• Government would need to spend around Rs 1.80 lakh crore on setting up fast charging points
• Fast charging unit costs about Rs 3-4 lakh to set up
• By 2030 the government needs to set up around 6 million fast charging points across India

The Indian government has set an ambitious target of 2030 for selling only electric cars in India. While the target is over a decade away, there is still a lot of work to do in order to promote the buying of electric vehicles in India.

India sold only 25,000 units of electric vehicles in FY17, a good jump from 16,000 electric vehicles sold two years ago. However, out of the total electric vehicles sold in India only a few of them are electric cars.

For instance, in FY16 out of the 22,000 electric vehicles sold only 2,000 were four-wheelers.

This shows the wide gap in the needed to be bridged for India to achieve the electric vehicle target.

Charging stations few and far in India

One of the main reasons for the low sales of electric vehicles in India is the charging infrastructure needed to support it. This includes increasing the number of electric vehicle charging stations in India in order to remove the fear among consumers of their car getting stalled if they run out of power.

Currently there are only 206 community charging stations available across India, according to a recent report by Indian Express.

over 30 million registered cars in India).

Ever 1 fast charging point is enough to cater to 5 electric vehicles in a single day.

Investment needed by government

As the fast charging unit costs about Rs 3-4 lakh to set up, this means that the government would need to spend around Rs 1.80 lakh crore on setting up fast charging points and stations in India.

This is a huge amount that the government needs to spend if it is serious in achieving this electric vehicle target by 2030. However, it seems that this may be a bit difficult to achieve since the government has currently put very little money where its mouth is.

In FY16 the government allotted a meager sum of Rs 10 crore and Rs 20 crore towards the installation of dedicated charging infrastructure for public buses, according to the Indian Express report. This was to only create charging infrastructure for government-owned buses at their bus depots. It has yet to create any charging infrastructure for other public electrical vehicles.

Types of charging stations

While there are various different types of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, fast charging points or stations are the fastest, taking only about 37 minutes.

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