India: Tata to build 300 charging stations

Tata Motors has announced that it will build a total of 300 charging stations for electric vehicles in five major Indian cities by the end of fiscal 2020 in cooperation with their sister company Tata Power.

The cities include Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The installation of the first seven charging stations in Pune has already begun. The next 45 charging stations are to be built in the coming months.

Although the announcement refers to fast charging stations, with outputs between 15 and 50 kW the charging points are among the slower DC chargers. The first 50 devices will be 15 kW chargers and will comply with the existing Bharat standard – the Bharat DC-001 corresponds to an industrial socket according to IEC 60309. The remaining 250 chargers with 30 to 50 kW will be equipped with the CCS2 connection, which is also widely used in Europe.

According to local media reports, the Indian government made the decision in July to build CHAdeMO and CCS charging stations in addition to the domestic Bharat standard – the GB/T standard from China, which has also been discussed for a long time, obviously does not come into play. However, Tata seems to have decided in favour of the CCS standard.

This should also give an outlook on the Group’s upcoming electric cars. A few days ago, Tata Motors announced four new electric models for the Indian market for the next 18 months. Tata currently only offers the Tigor EV, of which there will be a higher range version. There will also be electric versions of the Tata models Nexon and Altroz, as well as another still unnamed battery-electric vehicle.

Direct current fast charging still plays only a subordinate role in India, hence the low charging performance by European standards. The vast majority of electric vehicles in India are two and three-wheelers for which rapid charging technologies do not make economic sense. These are usually charged at the country’s usual 15-amp socket outlets.

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