In a shot in the arm for the fledgling EV ecosystem in India, Bolt, an EV infrastructure provider, has announced that it has set itself a target of setting up 1,00,000 charging points in the next six months --- mostly in non-metro cities like Jaipur, Nagpur, Nashik, Chandigarh, Surat, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, Vijayawada, among others.
The company also claimed that it has installed 10,000 EV charging stations in India in six months. The top three cities that have seen the maximum usage of the company's EV charging stations are Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR and Hyderabad.
The Bolt charging network is hardware agnostic and can be integrated with any charging solution provider in the country. Using the Bolt app, EV users can locate nearest charging points in 65 cities across the nation.
Bolt charging: The story so far
Of the total 4,273 publicly available Bolt EV charging points in India (the others are in private spaces), Bengaluru has the highest number installed in the country with 1,754 chargers followed by Delhi/NCR region at 663 and 347 in Hyderabad.
"Bolt has added more than 15,000 plus active users on the Bolt charging network up to February 2022 and over the last six months alone, the Bolt charging infrastructure has successfully powered 344 electric vehicles across India,” the company said in a statement. An average of 1.57 hours are spent for charging an EV per every charging point, it added.
The company's charging points have helped generate a passive income of Rs 64,000 cumulatively across India, with the overall average pricing recorded as Rs 26 per unit of electricity dispensed, the company claimed.
It said that in the last six months alone, more than 20 OEMs/EV ecosystem players such as SpareIt, Park+ and EV fleet solution providers have partnered with Bolt across India.
Bolt's electric vehicle (EV) charging network is powered by the Bolt Operating System (OS), a patent-pending system that turns EVs into safe and connected modes of transportation. Bolt Charging Network is a decentralized EV charging station network located across India.
The network is powered by universal charging points which are available for purchase not just for EV owners, but for any individuals who want to install EV charging points in their garages, RWAs, shops, commercial spaces, and so on.
EV ecosystem: Miles to go
According to a report by NITI Aayog, the cumulative investment in India’s electric vehicle (EV) transition could be as large as Rs 19.7 lakh crore ($US266 billion) between 2020 and 2030. The Ministry of Power’s guidelines say that there should be at least one EV charging station every 25 km on both sides of a highway. The Indian government has also set itself a target of setting up 400,000 charging stations to meet the requirement for two million Electric Vehicles (EV) that could potentially ply on its roads by 2026.
Talking of EV ecosystem infrastructure, recently BPCL tied up with Hero MotoCorp. The government itself is doing its bit by trying to roll out a battery swapping policy. In general, having conveniently located EV charging stations will further speed up the adoption of electric vehicles in the country.
The EV ecosystem in India is expected to experience a robust growth in the coming years in India as auto manufacturers turn to electric vehicles to attract new consumers. Companies manufacturing charging stations for electric vehicles are witnessing an increase in demand including from --- wait for it --- representatives of apartment complexes.
