Bharat Petroleum Corporation limited or BPCL on Thursday grabbed many eyeballs!!
The latest news is that BPCL had launched the first EV or electrical vehicle friendly highway in south India with 10 fuel stations along the 900km route on the Chennai-Madurai-Trichy highway.
It is now said that this would be followed up on key routes that have high traffic and have an inclination for transition to travel by electrical vehicles. Executive director in-charge, BPCL, Mr. P.S. Ravi expressed his thoughts. He explained that the launch of EV fast charging stations in large format fuel stations on the Chennai-Trichy-Madurai highway (each at a distance of about 100km) would eliminate range anxiety among existing and future 4 wheel EV owners.
The state of art fuel station at Meenambakkam caught the attention of many. To charge up to 80%, EVs normally take 30 to 40 minutes. This was as per a BPCL spokesman. It is superb to note that for those who would be waiting for charging facilities have been provided for relaxation and refreshments.
The consumers would be charged based on the kilowatts used and the amount would be just half of what the consumers pay for the petrol based cars. Point is that to boost the inter-city travel for EVs BPCL would be providing CCS-2 EVCS and its fuel stations at strategic intervals on all the major national highways connecting major cities. As many as 7000 conventional retail outlets would be converted into energy stations and by this multiple fuelling options would be provided. This would include EV charging facilities too. This was according to Mr. Ravi. It is now revealed that another highway in south India would be targeted in the month of March. Across India, in June there might be 300 to 400 charging stations in India. This has been planned by BPCL.