India might be a bit late to the race to electric vehicles (EVs), but the whole idea of shifting away from polluting vehicles is gaining momentum. This is also thanks to a few private aggregators which are working towards this dream. One of them is Tata Power Ltd, which has recently revealed its plans to set up around 1,000 charging points in the National Capital Region (NCR) region.
In a recent interaction, Praveer Sinha, Managing Director of Tata Power explained his plans to set up the infrastructure for EVs in India. As per the interaction, the company currently has 21 charging points set up across Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad. As an addition to these, the company will be setting up 1,000 new ones in the NCR region through a total investment of Rs 700 million. 100 new ones in Maharashtra are also in the pipeline.
Reuters
Going forward, the company plans to collaborate with Hindustan Petroleum, Bharat Petroleum and Indian Oil to install charging stations at there infrastructure and cater to both private and commercial vehicles alike. It will also tie up with entities like metro stations, hospitals, malls, hotels, etc in addition to its own franchises.
With such partnerships, Tata Power aims to cut down on its real estate investment for the EV charging stations and in case an opportunity to cross-sell products is available, it will be open to pursue them.
Reuters
As for the charging stations, the plan is to equip them with both normal and fast chargers. While the normal chargers will take 7 hours to power up the batteries from 0 to full, fast chargers will accomplish the same within 90 minutes.
Although no timeline for the investment has been provided as of now, Sinha believes that Delhi alone could need around 3,00,000 fast chargers, going by 30 percent EV penetration into an estimated car population of 10 million by 2030. The corresponding investment could reach as high as $1-1.5 billion. In such a scenario, having a head start on the infrastructure required to power these EVs can really prove to be a boon for Tata Power.