Plugged In, Powered Down: The Uncomfortable Truth About India's EV Charging Infrastructure - A First-Person Account, a Systemic Analysis, and a Blueprint for Change

The future of mobility is electric. But in India today, the road to that future is paved with dead chargers, fragmented apps, and vanishing wallet balances.

A long-range EV in India - A showcase of what sustainable mobility should look like when it works.

This is a story about how a simple family holiday drive from Gurgaon to Jaipur, in a modern long‑range EV, turned into a slow, simmering anger at how unprepared our systems are for the transition we keep promising on billboards and in policy speeches. It’s my attempt to turn that frustration into a clear call to action for anyone responsible for India’s mobility future.

The trip that shattered the illusion

On paper, my car should have made the Gurgaon–Jaipur run feel effortless. I drive a Kia Carens Clavis EV, a long-range electric vehicle with a claimed 400–500 km on a full charge. On paper, a trip from Gurgaon to Jaipur – roughly 240 km on NH48 – should be a non-event, comfortable, and effortless. A showcase of what sustainable mobility should look like when it works. So I did what any careful driver would do before a family trip: checked the route, looked up charging options on multiple apps, planned a couple of backup stops “just in case”, and reassured my family that this was going to be smooth, clean, and future‑ready mobility.

It turned out very different, and not in a good way unfortunately!

What should have felt like an easy demonstration of why EVs are the future turned into a live case study in how broken our charging ecosystem still is out on the highway. Station after station appeared on my screen as “available”, only to turn out to be dead, inaccessible, underpowered, or simply not where the map said it would be. The real anxiety wasn’t about whether the battery could handle the terrain. It was about whether the system around the battery would show up when we needed it.

Range anxiety, in that moment, stopped being a marketing phrase and became a physical sensation. It’s the tightness in your chest as the state‑of‑charge dips below what you’d like to see, your kids ask how long it’ll take, and you realise you’re relying more on hope and improvisation than on infrastructure.

Do note that this is not a rant; this is a reckoning – and more importantly, a roadmap. I write this as both an EV owner who has lived the frustration firsthand, and as a doctoral research scholar in Human Resource Management who studies how technology either empowers or alienates people at scale. The lessons are identical whether you're looking at a workplace or a highway. Infrastructure must serve the human at its center or… it is set up to fail.

What we actually saw on the ground

A few hours into that journey, some patterns became painfully clear.

First, “available” didn’t mean “usable”. Stations marked on apps simply didn’t have power, were mid‑repair, or had been dead for weeks with no indication to the driver approaching them. A charger that exists only as a pin on a screen is worse than no charger at all: it lures you off the highway, wastes your time, and erodes trust.

Second, starting a charging session was often harder than reaching the station. With some providers, it took 15–30 minutes of wrestling with buggy apps, QR codes that wouldn’t scan, OTPs that refused to arrive, and interfaces that felt like they had been designed by someone who had never actually stood next to a charger on a hot afternoon with a tired family in the car.

Third, even when you did get a charger to start, you realised how fragile the notion of “fast charging” is in practice. A “60 kW” DC unit frequently means 30 kW each when two cars plug in, and that turns a reasonable stop into a long wait. When you’re already anxious, watching the percentage tick up painfully slowly is its own special kind of torture.

Finally, there was the feeling of being invisible. Petrol pumps announce themselves from kilometres away with tall, bright, standardised signage. Most EV chargers hid in hotel parking lots, behind buildings, or inside fuel forecourts with no prominent EV‑specific sign at highway eye‑level. You had to crawl, stare at the map, and guess. In theory the chargers were “nearby”. In reality, they were invisible.

On that one trip, I had multiple conversations with other EV owners at the lone working stations we found. The stories were depressingly similar: dead chargers on key corridors, money stuck in random wallets, and a general sense that the car is far more ready than the country.

Chaos at an EV charging station along a highway

Stepping back: what the data actually says

When I came back home, the HR professional and doctoral researcher in me refused to leave this as “just a bad experience”. I started digging into the numbers behind what we’d seen.

Total EV registrations in India reached 2.3 million units in 2025, up from 1.95 million in 2024, with EVs now accounting for 8% of all new vehicle registrations. Infrastructure wise, by March 2026, the Government of India reported 27,737 public EV charging stations installed nationwide, with about 22,753 of them operational. That’s a dramatic increase in a few years, driven by schemes like FAME‑II, which has sanctioned around ₹912.5 crore and utilised about ₹655 crore for charging infrastructure, and a further ₹2,000 crore earmarked under the PM E‑DRIVE scheme. On slides, those numbers look impressive.

But let’s look closer. Independent analyses of India’s EV ecosystem estimate that we currently have roughly one public charger for every 235 EVs on the road. In more mature markets, the ratio is often in the range of one charger for every 6–20 EVs. In other words, the gap isn’t a rounding error; it’s an order of magnitude. [evselect]

The infrastructure is also deeply uneven. States like Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Gujarat and a few others host close to 60% of the country’s public chargers, leaving large parts of the map – especially Tier‑2 and Tier‑3 cities and long highway corridors – functionally under‑served. Rajasthan appears in the “top ten” by station count, but that doesn’t automatically translate into reliable, well‑placed chargers on the specific route you’re driving. [greatpelican]

And then there’s the reliability issue. Government data itself distinguishes between “installed” and “operational” chargers, admitting that thousands of stations are not functioning at any given time. Other industry tracking suggests that nearly a fifth of public chargers were offline when March 2026 data was compiled. When you combine that with fragmented apps and poor visibility, the lived experience of an EV owner is very different from the headline of “27,000+ stations”. [pib.gov]

In short: we have made progress on quantity, but we have not yet earned trust on quality.

How China and other markets are pulling ahead

To understand how far we still have to go, it’s instructive to look at what China has quietly built over the past few years. By the end of 2025, China’s total number of EV charging facilities crossed 20.09 million units, supporting a fleet of more than 40 million new energy vehicles. Of these, about 4.7–4.9 million are public chargers and the rest are private, integrated into homes, communities, and workplaces. [english.www.gov]

The charger‑to‑vehicle ratio there is often reported around 1:2–1:5, meaning there are multiple chargers per EV instead of hundreds of EVs chasing each charger. China has installed charging facilities at over 98% of its expressway service areas, with many provinces achieving full coverage in all townships. In late 2025, it launched a three‑year action plan to reach about 28 million charging facilities by 2027, with public charging capacity expected to exceed 300 million kilowatts. [en.people]

What matters here is not just the scale but the intent: expressway coverage, township saturation, steadily rising average power per public charger, and explicit numerical targets for both capacity and geography. The network is designed to be visible, dense, and capable – not just present in a spreadsheet. [carnewschina]

Other developed countries may not match China’s absolute numbers, but the pattern is similar: clear charger‑to‑EV benchmarks, strong emphasis on uptime and interoperability, and charging infrastructure treated as core energy and transport infrastructure rather than a side experiment. [chinaevhome]

India, in contrast, is still talking mainly about “number of stations sanctioned” and “outlay approved”. We are not yet consistently talking about charger‑to‑EV ratios, uptime guarantees, or corridor‑level coverage standards in the same disciplined way. [insightsonindia]

The human cost behind the policy gap

For policymakers, these may sound like technical details. For families on the highway, they are the difference between confidence and fear.

As a driver, I don’t feel the ratio 1:235 as a statistic. I feel it as that moment when the battery dips lower than I’d like and the charger I’d counted on turns out to be dead. I feel it as the irritation of standing in the sun, trying to reach customer support that never picks up. I feel it as my children asking, “Are we stuck?” while I mentally calculate plan B, then plan C.

Other EV owners I’ve spoken to on trips narrate the same pattern: planning every longer journey like a military operation; carrying multiple apps with money locked in tiny wallets; sharing lists of “stations to avoid” because they’re unreliable; and quietly advising friends who are considering EVs to think twice if their primary use‑case is inter‑city travel.

From an HR lens, this is a classic systems failure. We have a technology that works – the car. We have policy intent that sounds serious – the schemes and budgets. But the human experience at the point of use is alienating. When a system repeatedly tells users “you’re on your own”, they either exit, or they cope by becoming far more defensive and distrustful than they need to be.

And this is tragic, because the stakes go beyond convenience. Continuing to lock in fossil fuel dependence has climate, health, and energy security consequences that we can’t keep postponing. Every frustration that scares someone away from an EV today is also, indirectly, an extension of our air pollution, our import bill, and our vulnerability to volatile oil markets.

Electricity and hydrogen: the fuels we say we want

India’s clean mobility conversation often mixes electricity, hydrogen, and other alternatives in broad strokes. The reality is more nuanced, and that nuance shows why infrastructure and execution matter so much.

Globally, electrification – particularly battery EVs backed by cleaner grids – is the most mature clean‑fuel pathway for light‑duty transport. Major international agencies have repeatedly pointed out that when EVs are powered by low‑carbon electricity and supported by adequate charging networks, they deliver rapid and meaningful emissions reductions in transport. [chinaevhome]

Hydrogen, especially green hydrogen, is strategically attractive for heavy transport, industry, and perhaps long‑haul applications, but international reviews still emphasise how small the share of low‑emissions hydrogen is in total hydrogen use today and how many projects are stuck in pipelines due to financing and regulatory uncertainty. Synthetic fuels and advanced biofuels are promising in certain sectors like aviation and shipping, but they too rely on robust, low‑carbon energy supply chains and industrial scale production. [chinaevhome]

In other words: even where the technology is promising, the bottleneck is infrastructure, policy execution, and human‑centred design – not just in India but across the globe. However, in India, the pattern we are seeing with EV charging – assets installed, but trust and usability lagging – is exactly the pattern we must avoid repeating with hydrogen dispensing, synthetic fuel pilots, or whatever comes next.

If we’re serious about moving away from fossil fuels, we cannot afford to be casual about the systems that are supposed to carry that transition. “Ham‑handed” isn’t just a colourful adjective here. It’s a warning.

What needs to change: from the driver’s eye level

So what would a sane, human‑centred EV infrastructure look like on the ground in India? Based on this trip, my later research, and conversations with other owners, a few non‑negotiables emerge.

Non-negotiable solutions to the woes of EV charging infrastructure

1. Stop counting only stations; start counting service

We need to move from “how many chargers have we sanctioned” to “how many chargers work reliably, where, and for whom”. That means:

• Public reporting of uptime: each Charge Point Operator (CPO) should publish monthly uptime data for their stations, especially those built with public money.[pib.gov]

• Penalties for chronic downtime: a charger that’s listed as “available” but has been down for weeks should trigger financial and regulatory consequences.[evselect]

• Corridor‑level standards: major highways should have minimum spacing and capacity standards – say, functioning fast chargers every 50 km on key national corridors – not vague assurances.[greatpelican]

A family on NH48 doesn’t care how many chargers exist in the country. They care how many work on their route today.

2. One network experience, not twenty fragmented apps

India is the country that built UPI. We know how to make a unified, interoperable digital layer that sits over competing providers. There is no reason EV charging should still force users to juggle a dozen proprietary apps and wallets.

The way forward is a “One Nation, One EV interface”:

• A single national platform or protocol that lets any EV owner discover, initiate, and pay at any public charger, regardless of who operates it. [evselect]

• Mandatory interoperability: CPOs that receive subsidy or public land should be required to integrate with this platform, just as banks integrate with UPI. [insightsonindia]

• Automatic refunds: failed sessions should trigger immediate refunds to the user’s main payment method, not leave them with stranded balances in obscure in‑app wallets. [evselect]

This isn’t a technical fantasy; industry discussions are already floating UPI‑style solutions for charging. They now need political will and regulatory backbone. [evselect]

3. Make chargers as visible as petrol pumps

Visibility is not cosmetic; it’s psychological infrastructure. Drivers trust what they can see. We need standardised, highway‑grade signage for EV stations:

• Tall, bright, uniform EV symbols visible from at least a few hundred metres, on both sides of the road. [greatpelican]

• Advance signs (“EV charging in 5 km / 2 km”) on national highways, just as we do for fuel stations. [greatpelican]

• Clear directions to the entry and exit from the main carriageway, so you’re not guessing which service road to dive into. [greatpelican]

  The moment chargers become as easy to spot as fuel pumps, range anxiety will drop sharply – even before we perfect the apps.

4. Design the user journey, not just the hardware

Too many chargers feel like they were deployed by engineers who never had to stand next to them with a real user. We need a basic standard of user experience:

• Session initiation under five minutes, including app or card steps. That should be a measurable KPI, not a lucky accident.

• Interfaces that work in bright sun, with large fonts and clear, multilingual instructions.

• Shade, seating, restrooms, and safety lighting at highway stations, so waiting 30 minutes isn’t a punishment.

As a HR leader, I can’t avoid the analogy: if we deployed internal HR systems that routinely locked people out and made basic tasks painful, we would call it a failure of design. EV charging is no different.

5. Customer support that treats energy as critical, not optional

Energy access on a highway is not like ordering food from an app. When something goes wrong, support is emergency infrastructure. Minimum expectations should include:

• 24×7 reachable helplines for major corridors, staffed by people who can actually diagnose and fix issues, not script‑readers.

• Clear escalation paths for stranded users – whether that means manual overrides, backup stations, or at least honest information.

• Guaranteed response times: “We will call you back within X minutes” should be a commitment, not a generic reassurance.

Every angry EV owner with a story about unanswered calls is another person who will warn friends away from the transition.

A personal call to the authorities and industry

I’m writing this not just as an EV owner, but as someone who has spent over two decades in organisational life, watching how systems either enable people or grind them down. From that vantage point, the message to authorities and industry leaders is blunt.

You cannot be ham‑handed about this transition.

You cannot keep issuing press releases about targets and outlays, and then leave citizens to discover – on the highway, with their families – that half the chargers are dead, the apps don’t talk to each other, and the support lines ring into a void. You cannot keep telling us that clean mobility is the future, while making the everyday experience of using it feel like a punishment for believing too early. [auto.economictimes.indiatimes]

If you genuinely believe India must move away from fossil fuel dependence – to protect our air, our climate, and our energy security – then you must treat EV and clean‑fuel infrastructure as a national utility, with the same seriousness you give electricity and water.

That means:

• Hard standards, not soft intentions.

• Real accountability, not vague “stakeholder consultations”.

• Infrastructure that centres the human user, not just the procurement file.

To fellow EV owners: our stories are data

One thing this trip taught me is that EV owners are not merely “early adopters”; we are frontline testers of a system India claims to be building.

Talk about it. Every time you struggle with a dead charger, a broken app, or a support interaction that goes nowhere, you’re not just having a bad day. You’re generating data. When you share that experience – on social media, in reviews, in formal complaints – you are helping map the actual state of the infrastructure.

Tag highway authorities and ministries when the stations on their stretches fail you. Push manufacturers to own the charging experience around their dealerships, not just the brochure. Raise issues under consumer protection when you are charged for a service you didn’t receive. None of this is “whining”. It is accountability.

And to those who are hesitating about buying an EV because of all this: your hesitation is rational. But don’t write off the technology. The car, in many cases, is more than ready. It’s the ecosystem that needs pressure.

The more of us there are on the road, demanding that the network grow up, the harder it becomes to hide behind intent.

The road ahead is personal

For me, that Gurgaon–Jaipur-Gurgaon trip was supposed to be a quiet family memory. It became instead a sharp reminder that the transition away from fossil fuels will not be won only in conference halls and strategy decks. It will be won – or lost – in moments like the one where an anxious parent stands next to a silent charger on a hot afternoon, wondering which system to trust.

I still believe in the EV story. I still believe in electricity and hydrogen and other clean fuels as our way out of the environmental and geopolitical dead‑end of fossil dependence. But belief, at this stage, is not enough. We need competence. We need humility. We need authorities who listen to lived experience and redesign systems accordingly.

If you’re in a position of influence in this space – government, industry, utilities, OEMs – please read stories like mine not as complaints, but as feedback loops. We are not asking for perfection. We are asking for basic reliability, dignity, and honesty.

Because until the day an Indian family can take a long EV road trip without needing a backup plan for the backup plan, we are not really “transitioning”. We’re just talking about it. And talk, as my trip proved, doesn’t charge a battery.