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Are OMCs Failing India's EV Charging Mission? RTI Data Tells a Troubling Story

Background

While private CPOs toil hard to provide reliable charging infrastructure for EVs, the government has given the responsibility of installing the charging infrastructure to the oil major corporations (OMCs). Over the last few years, 10k-plus chargers have been installed by these OMCs. But they forgot that installing and operating the infrastructure are two different things. The chargers are offline, they are not onboarded, and much more.

So we thought, why not hear it from the horse's mouth on how their infrastructure is doing? So we raised RTI, which had the following simple questions

  1. How many chargers are deployed, and how many are visible in the app?
  2. Uptime report for the chargers for the year 2025
  3. Usage report for the chargers for the year 2025

RTI was raised to HPCL and BPCL, and their response was far from ideal.

HPCL

  1. HPCL says it has deployed 2801 fast chargers to date, and 1022 are available on CMS/app out of the same. This means 1779 chargers or ₹180 cr worth of infrastructure is lying defunct (assuming ₹10L price per charger).
  2. For the 1022 chargers available on the app, HPCL did not provide uptime or usage data and has asked us to visit the HP charge app for such information. Both responses have been appealed.

BPCL 

  1. BPCL provided no information about charger deployment, uptime, and usage. It has been stated that all information is available on the eDriveBPCL Drive app. This has also been appealed. 

Expectation

Our humble request to the Petroleum Minister, Hardeep S Puri, and his office is to appoint a team that conducts an audit, gets most of this charging infrastructure online, and ensures the public money deployed by the government to improve charging infrastructure is not wasted.


About the Author

  • Ferrari Rules

    Ferrari and F1 Fan || EV enthusiast || IT professional

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