Tata Power comes up with more EV charging stations and start-up boosting battery swapping for 2 wheelers and 3 wheelers

Tata Power and Apollo Tyres Ltd. join hands to set up EV charging stations

India’s EV drive is going to see a massive push as Tata Power has partnered with Apollo Tyres to deploy electric vehicle charging stations at the latter’s commercial and passenger vehicle zone across India. Having presence in all types of chargers like DC 001, AC, Type2, Fast DC chargers up to 50 kWh and fast chargers for buses up to 240 kWh, Tata Power and Apollo Tyres have made this strategic partnership to reach large number of EV consumers.

Initially Tata Power will set up charging stations at 150 branded retail outlets at CV and PV zones of Apollo Tyres. This facility is not limited to customers visiting this tyre retail outlet, but it is also open for use by general public throughout the year. Tata Power has already deployed an extensive EV charging infrastructure with 1000+ EV charging points across 200 different cities under EZ charge brand. With Tata Power’s huge service network, Apollo Tyres Ltd. is assured that they will be able to provide uninterrupted charging infrastructure across their locations.

Tata Power EZ Chargers’ ecosystem covers entire value chain of Captive Chargers, Public Chargers, Home Chargers and Bus/Fleet Chargers. They also have a robust software platform for customers of EV charging. Tata Power EZ Charge is a mobile based application which will give consumers a simple and easy charging experience. With the help of this app, consumer can locate EV charging stations and can pay bill online.

But the Countries Green Mobility drive is not limited to big companies. Many start-ups are coming up with innovative ideas to solve the charging issues.

Battery Swapping, another major drive for green mobility

In Bengaluru, Sun-Mobility, established in 2017 by Chetan Maini, has set up 14 automated orange and black booth for battery swapping, a concept pioneered in China. This saves a lot of time for public transports like e-rickshaw or delivery services by e-scooter, who wants to be on road as much time as possible instead of spending time on charging. These vehicles are running throughout the day and cannot wait to be recharged at night. The owners can use an authentication key, which will help to open a vacant compartment to place their drained out battery and pull out a fully powered pack. This whole process takes just 5 minutes instead of 3 hours on charging an e-rickshaw battery.

Sun-mobility has attracted investment from oil trader Vitol Group and Bosch Ltd. which bought 26% stake in the start-up. It plans to expand its swap station network in India to 600 from 70 by the end of this year.

Swapping battery is one of the best solution for a country like India where population density is very high and large number of people are staying in stand-alone buildings and cannot arrange a proper charging infrastructure in their house. In many cases, there is no proper parking and cars are parked on road overnight. Battery swapping will save time as well as cost on setting up infrastructure at each and every building. However, this business will be profitable only when a considerable number of EVs are out on road.

The pivot to battery swapping was a key topic in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s speech in Budget 2022. Government plans to standardize battery hardware design and compel automakers to follow the new norms. With lack of space in India’s crowed urban areas, Government is developing policies to encourage the industry as it is harder to roll out traditional charging infrastructure at every place.

India, a country of 1.3 billion people, has only 1640 operational EV chargers, more than half of which are concentrated in nine major cities. Currently in India, swapping of battery is mostly used by 1.5 million electric rickshaws as the swappable batteries available have a shorter range and cannot be used for Sedans and SUVs. As technology is evolving rapidly, India could switch to more efficient and environment friendly sodium-ion batteries from the current lithium-ion ones.