Friday, 31 May 2024 | PNS | DEHRADUN
All 28 unmanned electric vehicle charging stations will be functional on Char Dham Yatra routes within a week after the counting of votes polled in Lok Sabha elections scheduled to be held on June 4. The Transport department will organise an event for the inauguration of these EV charging points to ensure more tourists and pilgrims know about them and use EVs for their journey, the regional transport officer (Administration) and nodal officer of Char Dham in the Transport department Sunil Sharma said. He said that all the necessary works associated with EV charging station installation have been completed.
Talking about the charging process, he informed that the consumer will first have to scan the QR code installed in a charging station to pay in advance as per the need to charge the vehicle. No person will be present there to serve the consumers. Each of these charging stations has been installed at a distance of about 35 to 40 kilometres on Char Dham routes from one another and tourists will not have to worry about finding charging stations. Every charging station will have three guns out of which, two will be fast chargers. He said that the fast chargers can charge the vehicle within an hour while the normal charger will take about four to six hours.
The vehicle operators can choose either facility at their convenience. The new EVs consume about 40 kilowatt hours (kWh) to 60 kWh of electricity. Such vehicles use about 30 units of electricity per charge. Depending on slow and fast charging, it will cost about Rs 450 to Rs 600 per charge in the charging station. An EV can easily travel about 250 kilometres on each full charge. It will also be highly cost efficient for EV owners compared to petrol or diesel-fuelled vehicles, the RTO said. The department has also developed an application through which people can know beforehand about the locations of charging stations, how many people are in queue to charge their vehicles and when exactly they will get their turn, Sharma said. He said that the department took this initiative as part of the Central government’s project to promote the use of electric vehicles to protect the environment.
The Central government also issued Rs 7.4 crore to the department for this project. The department made Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam (GMVN) the nodal agency of this project to ensure the installation of these EV charging stations across the Char Dham Yatra routes. This initiative will certainly encourage people across the country to use EVs for the Char Dham pilgrimage. As per the department’s plan so far, pilgrims will be able to use these charging points from the second week of June, he added.
