To speed up India’s electric vehicle (EV) revolution, the government of India is planning to subsidize EV charging infrastructure.

A Press Trust of India (PTI) report quoted the power secretary A K Bhalla said that the government is considering providing subsidy for encouraging setting up of EV charging infrastructure under a policy, likely to be unveiled in the coming days.

Talking about the expansion of EVs in the country, Bhalla also opined that it is a chicken and egg story because charging stations would not be set up without enough EVs and EV sales would not pick up unless there is enough facility to charge these vehicles.

“We are bringing a policy in consultation with heavy industries ministry on how these chargers can be established and whether we need to support that with subsidy, to begin with,” he said speaking at an event hosted by the World Bank, World Resources Institute (WRI), and Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL).

He further said, “E-mobility is an area where the government has been working. We have clarified that setting up charging infrastructure does not need a license as it is a service-oriented activity. In draft tariff policy, we have put certain policy statement for encouraging power supply to these charging stations. We have notified technical standards for charging infrastructure.

This new move by the government is in line with the preceding policies that have been framed for the EV sector. The Ministry of Power recently issued a clarification stating that no license is required to operate EV charging stations in India. This is expected to boost the participation of more private players in the creation of a nationwide EV charging station infrastructure.

The National E-Mobility Program has also been launched. Recently, the Ministry of Finance announced it is going to approve a corpus of ₹40 billion (~$0.58 billion) as a subsidy to be disbursed under the second phase of Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid and) Electric Vehicles (FAME) program.

To propel the growth of EVs in India, the government recently slashed the applicable rate of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries.

The policies for India’s EV sector seem to be reflecting the learnings of the government in the solar sector which is witnessing a huge gap between domestic manufacturing and solar project installations due to initial missteps by the government. In the EV sector, policies are being introduced in the beginning, setting up due guidelines and standard for each segment of the industry including EV manufacturing and charging infrastructure.

Many states have also geared up for the uptake of EVs as a means of mainstream mobility. Recently, in a report published by Mercom, various EV hotspots of the country were analyzed.