Bengaluru to get electric vehicle charging points across the city

Bengaluru city has the highest number of electric car owners in India. Now, the government is planning to install 11 public charging points for e-vehicles. The first charging point will be opened for public from February 15th. It is located at the KR Circle at Bescom’s corporate office.

Karnataka Energy Minister, DK Shivakumar says,

“For the first time in the country, we are coming out with the EV charging stations, which will be inaugurated on February 15. For now, there will be one such station at the Bescom headquarters near KR Circle and later 11 more such stations will be added in six months. The locations for these stations are being identified. Each vehicle can be charged in about 25 to 30 minutes,”

This is the first phase of 11 fast track charging points that are planned across the city. It is not yet clear if the users will be charged with using these points at the moment. The MD of BESCOM, P Rajendra Cholan says that they have sent a proposal to the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) to fix a traffic fo the charging station so the general public can use the facility.

Bengaluru city has over 6,000 electric vehicles. Bescom is working to replace 100 of its official vehicles with electric ones to promote the use of clean energy vehicles. Bescom also claims that Bengaluru has surplus power and the new charging station will not affect the power supply to the city homes and industries.

The Indian government earlier announced that India will be fully electric vehicle nation by 2030. However, car manufacturers have shown concern over the limited infrastructure in the country that will be a hurdle in the widespread rollout of the electric vehicles.

Currently, Mahindra is the only manufacturer that commercially sells electric vehicles in India. In the future, manufacturers like Tata, Maruti Suzuki, Toyota and Hyundai have plans to launch electric vehicles in the Indian market too.