Thin margins and vandalism leave half of India's highway EV chargers offline
By Eve
India's public EV charging network will grow from 52,000 points to about 70,000 by next year, with roughly 29,000 fast chargers, Tata Power's Deepak Jain told the Autocar Professional EV Conclave in Delhi on Tuesday. However, at least half of highway chargers do not work, according to FADA president Sai Giridhar, with industry uptime at about 80 per cent. Jain cited thin electricity margins that make staffing sites uneconomical, leading to vandalism, and unreliable rural grid supply as the main causes of outages.
Why it matters
Chronic downtime on India's highway corridors undermines driver confidence and slows fleet electrification, while low margins force operators to choose between remote monitoring and physical security. CPOs entering the market must budget for control room infrastructure and local technician networks to match Tata Power's 95 per cent uptime benchmark.
Source
- Original title
- “Thin Margins Leave India's Highway EV Chargers Unguarded”
- Published
- 27 October 2026
- Updated
- 28 October 2026
In this story
- Topic
- EV Charging
- Place
- India
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