India to build more than 2,600 charging stations
The government of India has approved the establishment of 2,636 charging stations for electric vehicles throughout the country. The charging stations will be distributed to 62 cities in 24 states and Union territories.
Of these 2,636 charging stations, 1,633 will be rapid charging stations. With the approvals, the government wants to encourage car manufacturers to bring new electric vehicles to market as part of the FAME India program, says Prakash Javadekar, whose ministry is responsible for the environment as well as heavy industry and public enterprises.
“By installing all these charging stations, it is expected that at least one charging station will be available in most of the selected cities in a grid of 4 km x 4 km, which will boost the confidence of users of electric vehicles in terms of range anxiety,” says Javadekar. “This will encourage the OEMs to launch the new electric vehicle models which they were hesitant because of lack of charging infrastructure”.
The FAME II (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid & Electric Vehicles) funding program provides for subsidies with a total value of the equivalent of 1.4 billion dollars. Last summer, for example, grants were approved for almost 5,600 electric buses. The exact amount of subsidies for the charging stations was not mentioned in the reports.
As for the charging stations, 106 cities with more than 7,000 planned charging stations have reportedly applied. After the evaluation of the expressions of interest, the Ministry has awarded the subsidies for the 2,636 charging stations mentioned. In total, the government expects that about 14,000 charging points will be installed in the cities – an average of 5.3 charging points per charging station.
1 Comment