Many of you have asked my thoughts on this recent news of EV charging points at ⛽ station. So here are mine, let me know below yours and let's discuss.
Let's access the case of ⚡🔌 at ⛽ .
Cities
As much as I have seen, be it Delhi or my hometown Bhiwani or Jaipur, I don't see ⛽ having open space available. They are so dense and many are small. Delhi ones are always full with long lines. Does it make sense to put Chargers there? For 2w, maybe. A small point, not much investment. Idk. 4w need space and honestly no one would park the car there, I won't. Where do I park?
I am visiting a shopping mall or restaurant. Where do we park our vehicles? At a nearby parking lot. We need chargers there. Since stay time is long, most can be ~7.5kw AC fasts, with DC fasts in future as more EVs are on road.
I am working in a office (private, govt, or in college). We already park our 4w somewhere. We need chargers there. Mandate points at all parking.
So for cities, I don't think it's much worth putting efforts by govt to have chargers at ⛽. If some ⛽ take initiative themselves and put a charger, sure. No issue.
State Highways & National Highways
⛽ at Highways have enough free space for few charging point. And many are situated near some restaurant or dhaba's. So that's a good area for it. Eat + Charge. There can be few AC fast points & few DC fasts. It's great if chargers are placed there.
Zoo, Memorial, Bird Sanctuaries, National Parks. People visit these places. Won't it be great if some charging points are placed there at parking. At all these tourist destinations.
We need to place chargers at point of conveniences. Places where it suits most.
Also I wish that govt makes CCS2 standard, it will really be waste of resources to put and mandate CHAdeMO and Bharat DC at Highways.
Nikhil Chaudhary
*Don't forget to check out club merch. All profits will go towards helping build EV charging infra in the country.
I understand what you are saying, get the charging stations at Public places or office places makes sense But for my understanding this is a good initiative by government if implemented at fast pace. Issues I think can come: 1. public places in cities come at a great cost, this would increase the government bill by a lot. 2. then acquiring places, which is again a big issue in our country 3. construction cost of infrastructure these all points are bad start I believe and with our current projects status getting delayed for years, this would just gaining dust in some government department for many years At fuel stations these problems are solved, the station would already have infrastructure and space for this And I believe the construction of electric charging points should(can) be taken by the manufactures like what tesla is doing all around the world or what Ather is doing in Indian cities Govt could give them subsidy or some incentive to create this infrastructure With 69K stations in our country people also will get a sense okay they can charge the car anywhere(which is not true with our population, it is huge), but that feeling will help people buying electric cars