Telangana Looks To Boost EV Infrastructure With Charging Stations By 2021

Telangana has announced that it will be collaborating with Rajasthan Electronics and Instruments Limited (REIL) to install 138 charging stations across the state to promote electric vehicle (EV) adoption in the next year.

The project will be part of the second phase of the central government’s ambitious Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME II) scheme. It’s also in line with the state’s EV policy which aims to attract investments worth $3 Bn and create employment for 50K people by 2022 through EVs in shared mobility, charging infrastructure development and EV manufacturing activities.

According to a media report, the Telangana government has joined hands with REIL which has been working with the Department of Heavy Industries (DHI) to install EV charging infrastructure across the country.  REIL alongside other state-owned departments like DHI, Energy Efficiency Services (EESL), National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC), and PowerGrid got approval to set up more than 2.7K EV charging stations across 90 cities in India. REIL has already installed over 200 EV charging stations in Delhi, Jaipur and Chandigarh.

Telangana also clearly defines incentives on the demand and supply side of the EV ecosystem, draws a clear roadmap for developing charging infrastructure in the state and provides incentives related to various components of ownership cost of electric vehicles

There is also an emphasis on skill development for EV design, development and manufacturing, and aims to promote manufacturing of battery cells and packs through special status and incentives. The Telangana government targets 100% electric buses by 2030 for intra-city, intercity and interstate transport with 25% targetted by 2022 and 50% by 2025.

AK Jain, managing director of REIL said that it plans to manufacture electrical vehicle chargers in technical collaboration with reputed manufacturers under the Make in India initiative.

Under the FAME II scheme, the government, in April 2019, had proposed to invest INR 10K Cr for the next three years to support 7K buses, 55K four-wheelers, 5 Lakh three-wheelers, 10 Lakh two-wheelers that operate on Li-ion batteries. In addition to this, it had suggested to setup 2.7K charging stations, for every 3 Km in cities and every 25 Km on both sides of highways by allocating INR 1K Cr as subsidy for installing charging stations.