To boost the country’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure, the electric vehicles unit of Tata Motors has announced collaboration 2.0 whereby the company will partner with charging point operators to install public chargers and establish a mega charging network for faster electric vehicle charging. The aim is to install 4,00,000 electric vehicle charging points and 30,000 public chargers by 2027.
Under phase one, the company will set up 500 Tata.ev mega chargers (of 120 kW) in electric vehicles micro markets including Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, select highways with high vehicular traffic and inside the city in locations including malls, tech parks and commercial neighbourhoods.
The company has signed pacts with Tata Power, Statiq, ChargeZone and Zeon to operationalise 500 chargers by 2027.
Public chargers
“There are about 18,000 public chargers today and we want to double that to 30,000. Home charging and community charging will be a big focus area for growth. Home charging grows in line with the sales of new vehicles. Community charging is going to be a focused effort because we now want to convert even some of the office buildings and other compatible locations,” said Balaje Rajan, Chief Strategy Officer, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility.
Tata.ev will also introduce a unified RFID card that can be used by consumers across charge point operators. The company also stated that it is undertaking steps to ensure price parity among electric vehicles, “If mainstreaming has to happen then the ₹10 to ₹15 lakh category has to get rid of all the barriers. There is a pathway towards achieving it and we are working on localization, seeing which are the subsystems where we can reduce costs. Battery prices have come down to a certain level, but through design intervention of multiple subsystems, there is a possibility of further bringing down the cost. Price parity makes sense when have been able to give a 400-kilometre range. To give a 400-kilometre range electric car, in less than 10 lakh is what we are trying to work towards,” said Shailesh Chandra, Managing Director, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles and Tata Passenger Electric Mobility.