India's EV Boom Outpaces Its Charging Network
Electric vehicle sales are climbing steadily, but with only one public charger for every 235 EVs on the road, India's infrastructure lags far behind global benchmarks
Synopsis
The public EV charging infrastructure in India has increased by close to 6 times since 2022, with 29,000 such stations by the beginning of 2026. However, as the country moves towards roughly one charger per 235 registered electric vehicles (EVs) (compared to the international average of 1/6 to 20 EVs per charger), the charging infrastructure is still lagging behind EV uptake. The article explores the extent of the gap, interventions by the government and obstacles to deployment in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
Growth that occurs quickly but is unequal
The public charging stations in India increased from about 5,000 in 2022 to over 29,000 by the beginning of 2026, as revealed by the data of the Ministry of Heavy Industries presented to Parliament. As of March 2026, approximately 22,753 of these were reported as operational.
Much of that expansion is through the FAME scheme and, more recently, the PM E-DRIVE scheme, which has committed ₹2,000 crore to support 72,300 charging stations on 50 national highway corridors, including a 70-80 per cent subsidy on energy power infrastructure.
Growth has been overwhelmingly in the metros. Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have the maximum number of installations and Tamil Nadu is the only state where almost 90 per cent of chargers are within a kilometre of a highway. Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, on the other hand, still face major shortcomings in terms of availability and reliability.
The Ratio Problem
In 2025 India had 2.30 lakh EVs registered with the ratio being about 1 charger per 235 EVs, which is lower than the international ratio of 1 charger per 6-20 EVs suggested by the Observer Research Foundation. To achieve the government's 30% EV market uptake in new vehicles by 2030, there would be an estimated requirement for over 40 times more public charging points than are currently in place.
Between 2020 and 2025, India's electric transport sector had been a magnet for investments worth approximately ₹2.23 lakh crore, but only under a small portion of that amount was invested in charging infrastructure, according to Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Structural Barriers to Deployment
The industry has identified several further challenges: a lack of uniformity in connector specification means that many stations are not compatible with 2- and 3-wheelers, land use disputes between various municipal and revenue departments, and varying use rates which make investments in individual stations uncertain.
Even as the number of charging stations has increased by about 70 per cent from FY22 to early FY25, growth has not been commensurate with EV adoption, a CareEdge Ratings report has said.
State-based programs are making efforts to bridge the gap in various ways. Delhi has provided subsidized land rates for charging and swapping stations, as well as one of the lowest EV power tariffs in the country. If such localized solutions can be replicated at a national level, then India's charging network will be able to keep pace with its EV vision before 2030.