The government has recently drawn up a draft set of guidelines for constructing appropriate infrastructure to support a fleet of electric vehicles (EVs) nationwide.
What are the guidelines?
The guidelines focus on the requirements for setting up public charging stations for EVs as well as the ability to charge cars and scooters at home.
Public charging station could be established without a special licence, thus ensuring that the government don’t have control over new enterprises.
Furthermore, there will be no restrictions on the owners of EVs charging them at home.
Such charging will be carried out at the same tariff at which other household appliances are charged.
Meanwhile, the cost of charging at a public station will be determined by the electricity regulator for the state.
However, it cannot be more than 15% higher than the average cost of supply.
This would ensure that states do not see electric vehicle charging as a source of cross-subsidy for other electricity users.
Anyone setting up a power-charging station will have to be connected as a priority by the local power distribution companies.
Accordingly, the power-charging station will be afforded open access to the power grid.
Subsequently, a power-charging station can be able to contract to buy power from the generation firm it regards the cheapest and most reliable.
What should be done?
The government should ensure that after setting up the safety standards for the power charging stations, other requirements are left up to the market.
Apart from focussing on charging stations, the government needs to push carmakers to better design and market electric vehicles.
States, on their part, will have to take up this matter on priority and assign land to power-charging stations, since the process is quite land-intensive.
The government has set the target of at least 30% of electric vehicles on the road by 2030.
With the guidelines in hand, the government can try to implement it in the Union territories as pilot projects and then scale it at an all-India level.
