Thomas Chacko, 73, and wife Geetha undertook a trip on their electric Tata Nexon from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, and back to their hometown in Cochin in October-November last year. A total of 9,200 km. Chacko wanted to prove it was feasible to do the full length in an EV. They did complete the trip, but not without some tensions. Two times the car had to be towed when it ran out of charge, but Chacko says it was because he misunderstood the terrain – he had expected to find some slopes where the battery would regenerate. There were fast-chargers along most of the route, but fewer in north India, and none in Madhya Pradesh and Kashmir. Slow-charging is much cheaper, but many of those sockets, including in auto service centres, lacked earthing, and the EV charger would not work on those. Chacko returned with a sense of accomplishment – his EV never broke down. But some of those who heard his accounts said they would be wary of doing a long drive on an EV.
Charging infrastructure is the problem, but efforts are on to improve it. Virendra Goyal, head of business development for EVs at Tata Power, the country’s largest charging infrastructure provider, says they have chargers from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, and from Surat in the west, to Nagaon beyond Silchar in the east. Close to 4,000 charging points. The plan is to boost that number to 25,000 in the next five years.
