CHARGING IN PROGRESS

From dhabas to driveways, India's battle to build a reliable electric vehicle charging network rages on

- SUGANDHA MUKHERJEE

IN 2014-15, ELECTRIC vehicles (EVs) were little more than a statistical curiosity in India. Just 0.01% of all registered vehicles that year were electric.A decade later, the picture has shifted dramatically. In 2024-25, EVs accounted for 7.31% of new registrations, a surge that has caught policymakers, automakers and infrastructure companies scrambling to catch up. The electric revolution is no longer a distant promise, but unfolding in real time on India's roads. But a fundamental question looms—where will all these vehicles charge?

The half truth

India's charging landscape is expanding rapidly, at least on paper. According to Redseer's 'Powering India's EV Future' report, the country has grown from just 1,800 public chargers in FY22 to more than 30,000 by August 2025. Growth has doubled year after year—6,586 in FY23, more than 16,000 in FY24, and now 30,000.

Yet the numbers mask a more sobering reality. Of these 30,000 chargers, more than half, some 15,550, are nonoperational. Only 14,450 are actually working, and their utilisation is below 10%. In a country where EV adoption is accelerating, this gap between ambition and execution is glaring.

India's charging network is also metro-heavy—62% of chargers are in cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi, while non-metros, where EV adoption is quietly surging, account for just 38%. Jaipur, for example, now sees a quarter of all car sales coming from EVs, while for entry-level models like the Tata Tiago EV, nearly half of sales are outside the top 20 cities, in states such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.