Carzonrent, Fortum entities look to roll out 965 EVs, 3,200 charging points

The partnership would culminate into a $40-45 million investment in EC charging infra and purchase of 19,000 EVs over the next five years

Carzonrent and European electricity major Fortum have launched a partnership which would culminate into a $40-45 million investment in EC charging infrastructure and purchase of 19,000 EVs over the next five years.

Plug Mobility from Carzonrent India Private has tied up with Fortum group outfit Fortum Charge & Drive India Pvt Ltd (Fortum C&D), a leading Nordic electric vehicle (EV) charging service provider, to provide charging infrastructure for Carzonrent fleet of 19,000 cars to be inducted over the next five years across India.

Fortum C&D will set up 3,200 charging points for Plug Mobility during this period to support energy requirements of the fleet with the first 144 points coming up in the next 180 days.

Carzonrent is embarking on a diesel to EV fleet and this tie-up is the first step in that direction. Besides, the company will also be adopting an escrow account mechanism to fund purchase of EVs by its driver partners. This would involve opening accounts for around 5,000 accounts driver partners where equated monthly installment (EMI) amount for servicing loans for EVs would directly credit through Carzonrent platform.

Rajiv K Vij, founder, Plug Mobility, and Managing Director Carzonrent India, told Business Standard that in the event of a driver partner not being able to pay EMI the EV would be offered to some other driver partner.

Out of 965 EV purchases  of EVs that are expected, 765 would be basic sedans in the price range of Rs 10 lakh each while 200 would be bigger sized four wheelers of Rs 20 lakh prize level.

As part of the agreement, a total of 3,200 DC001 and CCS charging point chargers will be deployed in 79 cities and towns across India. The charging infrastructure will be used for Carzonrent’s recently launched EV fleet brand “Plug” and it will also be available for the general public to charge their Electric cars. Fortum C&D will set up and operate the charging points at its own cost and will install the charging stations gradually. The capacity of the deployed chargers will be over 100,000 KW.

Awadhesh Jha, executive director, Fortum Charge & Drive, said his company would be charging a small premium over the electricity cost in its charging fee for EV driver owners. This fee would be flexible based on a guaranteed minimum number of charges. Driver owners enrolled with Carzonrent would get preference for booking charging space at Fortum facilities.

The charger could be accessed by an EV user using Fortum C&D’s Mobile App. The process to use these electric vehicle charging stations requires registration on the part of the customers which will be carried out by Fortum by including basic details including driver details, time of charging, duration of charging, cost of charging, charger details, state, etc. The same details will be fed into the system to use for authentication and further analysis of EV usage and patterns. Using EV charging stations will require two-step authentication using a QR code generated for the specific car and verification of the same, after which it will be a smooth sailing charging process.

Vij said, “Carzonrent will provide a chauffeur-driven EV fleet through its initiative Plug for different ground mobility needs and our aim is on saving 4,00,000 tonne of carbon dioxide emissions in the next five years by introducing 19,000 EVs across India to service corporate business travel and employee transportation, guest and crew/staff movement requirement for hospitality and aviation sector, official travel requirement of Central and State Government and PSU entities, Airport Taxi services and SME clients..”