IOCL, Bharat Petroleum to install more than 17,000 electric vehicle charging stations across India

The annoucement from the oil giants came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Monday made a bold pledge to cut carbon emissions in India to net-zero by 2070.

Electric Vehicle Charging (Representational image)

Indian Oil Corp (IOC), the nation's largest oil firm, and Bharat Petroleum a Fortune Global 500 Company are betting big on electric vehicle charging and are planning to deploy more than 17,000 electric chargers combined in the next few years. While IOCL has made an announcement to set up 10,000 charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) in the next three years, BP has chalked out a plan to offer charging stations at around 7,000 petrol pumps over next few years. 

The annoucements from oil giants came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday made a bold pledge to cutting emissions at the world's third-biggest emitter to net-zero by 2070. With the bulk of 28 crore vehicles currently on Indian roads and most of 2.5 crore automobiles being added to the roads every year being either run on petrol or diesel, the requirement of fossil fuel will continue to grow.

At present, battery-powered, called EVs, make up for a small percentage of all automobiles. Of all new 2-wheelers sold, EVs make up for about 1% while the percentage of same in the four-wheeler category is just 0.2%. 25% of new three-wheeler sale is EVs. By 2030, 30 per cent of all new two-wheelers are projected to be electric while 35 per cent of all new three-wheelers would be using electricity as fuel. 15% of four-wheelers sold in 2030 would be EVs.

IOC plans to set up 50 KW EV charging stations at every 25-km and 100 KW heavy-duty chargers at every 100-km to weave a network that will provide customers easy access for charging their electric vehicles, said IOCL adding the charging stations would be set up at existing and new petrol pumps across the country.

In the first year, IOC will target setting up 231 EV charging stations in 9 high-priority cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Surat and Pune. Another 375 stations would be set up in the second year in these cities and a further 215 in the third year. In all, 944 charging stations would be set up in other state capitals over the three-year period but more than half of the 10,000 outlets planned would come up on highways and other cities.

While EV charging could typically take 45 minutes to 3 hours depending on the size of the charging stations, a battery swapping site offers the facility to change discharged batteries for a fully charged one in a matter of minutes.

With inputs from PTI