India's EV charging points up 10X in four years, but drivers still gripe

India's public EV charging network has grown tenfold in four years, according to a report covered by ET Auto. The count of charging points has climbed sharply since 2022, tracking the rise in electric two-wheelers, three-wheelers and cars on Indian roads.

The buildout is real. Highway corridors, city parking lots and fuel stations have added plugs at a pace that would have seemed unlikely a decade ago. Chargers that once clustered in a handful of metro pockets now show up in tier-2 towns and along trunk routes.

Drivers aren't celebrating yet.

The same report points to user experience as the weak link. Complaints centre on chargers that sit idle because of faults, apps that fail at the payment screen, and inconsistent pricing between operators. A driver pulling into an unfamiliar station often has no way to know whether the gun will actually work until they plug in.

What the numbers say

The tenfold jump is the headline figure. It reflects four years of expansion from a small base, which flatters the percentage even as absolute numbers stay modest next to the country's vehicle fleet. India still has far fewer public chargers per EV than China, Europe or the US.

Most of the new capacity has come from private operators and state-run utilities working in parallel. Oil marketing companies have added points at retail outlets. State electricity boards have set up others. The result is a patchwork with no single standard for access or billing.

• Charging points: up roughly 10X over four years
• Main gripes: downtime, payment failures, unclear tariffs
• Coverage: still thin outside major cities and highways

Why the gap matters

Range anxiety is the oldest excuse for not buying an EV, and it's a rational one for anyone who drives beyond city limits. A charger that exists on a map but doesn't work is worse than no charger at all. It burns time and trust.

Fleet operators feel this hardest. Electric three-wheelers and delivery bikes run fixed routes on tight schedules. A failed charge means a missed trip and lost income for the day. For them, network density matters less than network reliability.

The report doesn't offer a fix. It lays out the mismatch: hardware has scaled faster than the software and service layer around it. Interoperability between networks, real-time status updates and standardised payment are the obvious gaps.

Policy has pushed supply. Subsidies under earlier schemes and state-level mandates helped seed the network. Demand-side measures, like ensuring chargers stay maintained after installation, have drawn less attention.

India's EV sales keep rising, led by two- and three-wheelers rather than cars. That mix shapes what the network needs to look like. Scooters and rickshaws need many small, dependable points, not a few big highway stops.

For now, the tenfold growth stands as a genuine milestone. Whether it translates into a network people trust is a question the next four years will answer.