Indian Government Working On Low-Cost AC Charging Infrastructure

The Department of Science and Technology, the Office of Principal Scientific Advisor to the government of India and Niti-Aayog are working together to create an innovative, low-cost electric vehicle charging point which will not only be affordable, but also offer rapid scaling up of charging infrastructure across India. This in turn will help the country, especially the rural areas to adopt electric vehicles and electric mobility, a press release issued by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) said. The specifications, prototype and the proposed standards will be issued by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).

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(Government forecasts suggest that India will have sales of over 4 million electric two and three-wheelers by 2025)

Dr V. Sumantran, Chairman, DST-PSAO Group on Charging Infrastructure said, "when industry and government entities come together to work on national goals, remarkable progress can be achieved with speed. Furthermore, this effort brought out the talent in India for intelligent cost-innovation. Affordability constraints in India demand that we address problems keeping in mind both cost and scalability."

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Cities, towns & villages will soon be able to benefit from an innovative low-cost Electric Vehicle charge point that can accelerate adoption of Electric 2-wheelers and 3-wheelers.

Indian Standards for Low-cost AC Charge Point (LAC) to be released

Read: https://t.co/BZnN9PImGv pic.twitter.com/tnkQTvnjz3

— PIB India (@PIB_India) May 12, 2021

The Group of people working on the project set a target price of Rs. 3,500 ($50) for a smart AC (alternate current) charging point which allows up to 3 kW of power to be drawn by charging electric scooters and electric autorickshaws. The user will have a smartphone app which will be able to communicate with the low-cost charging point (LAC) via Bluetooth, over which payments and analytics can be enabled.

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The PIB press release also says that many Indian companies are already on board to manufacture this particular device which can be deployed at any place having a 220V 15 ampere single phase line. These include places like parking lots, malls, office and shopping complexes, hospitals, railway and metro stations as well.

(Companies like Ola Electric are already working on a dense network of EV hyper chargers)

The people from Department of Science and Technology, Niti Aayog and Office of chief Scientific Advisor to the government, says that about 84 per cent of total vehicle sales in the country is made up of internal combustion engine (ICE) two and three-wheelers. Forecasts suggest that by 2025, up to 4 million electric two and three wheelers could be sold in India and the LAC project has the potential to be highly scalable and be inter-operable at the same time. The formal release of the LAC standards will be announced in the next two months, after the field and durability trials are completed