Recently, you may have noticed vehicles on the road with a green number plate. Wondering what they represent? These are Electric Vehicles (EVs) that run on batteries. The buzz around electric vehicles has already picked up in India. While most of the sales are attributed to 3 and 2-wheelers, the 4-wheeler passenger vehicle segment has also started making noise. Now you also start to hear the new buzzword: EV charging stations. Worry not, we will explain in this blog what they are and how to find them.
What is an EV Charging Station?
To fuel up your traditional vehicles that are powered by either petrol, diesel, or CNG, you visit fuel pumps near you. Similarly, you have to visit public charging stations to charge your EV’s battery when you are running low on charge.
Image Source: ChargeZone Charging Station
Where Can I Find Charging Stations?
Unlike petrol pumps, charging stations are not dedicated infrastructure, hence you may be disappointed if you look for a structure like a typical fuel bunk. Instead, they are located within or inside already developed or crowded amenities like hotels, restaurants, shopping malls, fuel bunks, etc. This is because charging an EV takes time, somewhere between 40-50 minutes, and to kill your time while your vehicle is being charged, you need such amenities around. Because staring at your EV while it’s being charged might test your patience.
How to Find Public Charging Stations Near Me:
As they look small, are disguised within amenities, and are fewer in number, it can be hard to find them. But you can use charging station locator apps like EVJoints that host more than 6,000 stations, along with enough information about each station like what plug or connectors they have, tariffs, power ratings, etc., to help you decide before you reach the station. Or you have to install multiple individual EV charging apps for every charging station network to spot them. Who has the time for that?
Image Source: Glida Charging Station
How to Charge at Charging Stations:
When you visit fuel pumps, there will be an attendant even if the bunk is remotely located in villages. But in the case of charging stations, you will not see anyone helping you to charge. You have to install the EV charging app of that specific network, initiate a charging session, load money into their wallet, charge, and make the payment. A cumbersome process of installing multiple apps? This is what EVJoints intends to achieve in the years to come: gradually moving from locating stations, to showing station availability, to charging your EV. A unified EV charging app to offer you a seamless charging experience.
Scan the barcode and download the EVJoints app to find 6,000 EV charging stations across various networks.
Click & download the EVJoints app to find 6,000 charging stations.
Image Source: EVJoints App
How to Locate Stations During Long Trips:
Since public charging stations are fewer in number as we are in the nascent stage of EV adoption in India, you have to plan your trip in advance using an EV trip planner tool like the one EVJoints has. EVJoints route planner helps you not only locate stations along your route but also estimate the battery consumption of your EV when you reach each station that falls on your route and highlight the stations you should ideally stop to charge to reach without range anxiety.
Image Source: EVJoints App
Conclusion:
Even the existing infrastructure of fuel bunks took three decades to develop, so expecting public charging stations at every nook and corner now is unfair to the emerging technology. Having said that, one can easily travel from Kanyakumari to Kashmir with proper planning in advance using the EVJoints Trip planner. Confidently switch to EV and embrace the technology that doesn’t emit carbon, which has been killing our planet slowly. I hope this blog was informative for you. Let us know in the comments if you want us to cover any topic related to the EV space. Happy charging!
