Soon, you will be able to book slots for charging your electric vehicles

New Delhi: Charging electric cars in India will be made easy with 25 newly-installed e-vehicle charging stations in Lutyens' Delhi. The New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) will make booking slots at the stations through its 311 app mandatory in order to avoid chaos at these stations. There are close to 1,000 electric cars in the national capital, with over 50 percent of them operated by government officials.

"Cars of Indian brands such as Mahindra and Tata, which have already introduced a range of electric cars in markets, will have no problem at these stations. These stations will have direct current chargers which will take less time in comparison to alternating current (AC) charger to get the vehicle fully charged," said NDMC chairperson Naresh Kumar.

Goal is to minimise New Delhi's air pollution

"To minimise air pollution in the city, we aim to encourage people to buy more electric vehicles by simplifying the process for charging them. Based on the performance of these stations, steps will be taken to scale up the number of stations in future," said Kumar.

"To save users from standing in long queues, we have made arrangements to accept advance booking on 311 app for charging cars while payment of bills can be made using the payment gateway system," said an NDMC official.

In the second phase, NDMC will develop charging stations for cars manufactured by foreign companies like Toyota, Nissan and BMW. By the end of next month, NDMC will install nine stations.

"These stations will have combined charging system (CCS), each of 50 kilowatt capacity. The CCS chargers are even faster than DC charger and take just 30 minutes to fully charge a vehicle. But only the vehicles, which have full system in place, can use these chargers," said the official.