BYD India In Charging Tie-Ups To Reassure Customers

BYD India has tied up with three EV charging infrastructure firms, Chargezone, Volttic, and Indipro, to offer a more robust charging network to its customers. The firm, which started off targeting the Electric bus market in India before introducing its other vehicles, notably the E6.

The new charging partners will basically make their charging networks available to the firm’s E6 customers. We are not sure if they are seledctive otherwise, so to that extent, the announcement might just be a matter of reassuring e6 customers about their access to the charging poinbts /stations maintained by the three firms. While Chargezone claims to have an over 650 strong network of charging stations, Volttic claims a 300 strong network,  while Indipro with its unspecified number of facilities will also be available to customers.

The push to try and differentiate  by showcasing a charging ‘network’ seems to be more of a marketing tactic for now, as most of the charging stations being established across the country are more dependent on the common technology standard being used, than any specific tie-up. As far as we know, most stations do not really refuse use of facilities to  any brand if the tech is compatible. India has a clear charging protocol laid down, in the form of the AC001 and DC001 protocols. With the former more used for home charging and lower charging rates .

The focus on charging networks has been driven by two wheeler makers, whose electric offerings have even lower range than four wheelers, and hence, need to reassure users about the availability of public charging options. While some like Ather Energy started off with their own networks, others like Hero Electric have gone the tie-up route, adding on plans for thousands of  charging points for two wheelers in tie-ups with vendors of the type BYD has just announced.

A second trend that is not catching up with sales picking up is tie-ups with partners to provide assistance services on the roads for EV’s, as traditional roadside assistance forms have not really ramped up to handle EV’s yet. While potential buyers will do well to look out for these sort of tie-ups for now, as the market matures with higher volumes, these may not be issues anymore, and buyers will be able to go back to the traditional evaluation of the product itself.