India is witnessing a gradual increase in urbanization efforts in the last few decades. Indian cities are expanding at a rapid rate to accommodate the increasing footfall from the country’s peri-urban and rural areas, and the government’s Smart Cities Mission is being driven at full throttle to accommodate this spike in number of residents. However, while stationary infrastructure like large housing societies, healthcare facilities, educational institutions, roads & bridges are being built swiftly, a silent revolution via electric mobility is turning transportation — one of the primary constituents of smart cities is gathering pace as well.
What positions smart cities uniquely irrespective of geography is the abundance of large housing societies. While India has no dearth of them, turning them into smart housing societies is considered a difficult job. Prominent recent statistics show that by 2045, more than 45% of the Indian population will reside in urban areas, and as a result, high-density living is expected to increase significantly. Furthermore, projections reveal that by 2031, the number of households in the top 50 Indian cities inside gated communities will be at an all-time high of 51%. These large housing societies will be at the forefront of driving the EV adoption forward amongst other clean, green and sustainable initiatives. This means that the smarter large housing societies will become, the more development will be simultaneous to that of the cities.
Driving EV adoption rates
Smart housing societies are reflections of the larger communities, the urban areas themselves. With growing emphasis on urbanization, exhaustive focus has been expanded towards sustainable mobility through electric vehicles. With EV adoption rates projected for a significant increase in the coming years, it will be important to establish EV chargers in societies to integrate aspects like convenience, which in turn will drive the EV adoption rates. Globally, easy home charging has been pointed out to be the catalyst for achieving high EV adoption rates, as has been seen in countries like China and the US. This trend is a direction for India to follow in the coming years as well.
Furthermore, home charging is considered the global best practice, with over 80% of charging in mature markets taking place at home. This highlights a significant gap in driving EV adoption in India and must be addressed to ensure absolute EV penetration can take place in urban, peri-urban and rural areas. In the coming years, home charging support, or in this particular scenario, at large housing societies will be the catalyst for enabling faster EV adoption rates, while also addressing the presently existing challenges in a streamlined manner.
Enhancing sustainability
Beyond the immediate impact, the presence of EV chargers at housing societies offers much more towards building smart communities. To begin with, housing societies equipped with EV chargers put the narrative of prioritizing sustainability as a community. This is one of the reasons why different governments around the world have been encouraging residents to choose electric vehicles, and cooperation of housing societies will be one of the catalysts for getting close to the EV goals that India has. At present, Indians are becoming more receptive to sustainable alternatives to conventional vehicles, and with government subsidies and EV chargers equipped smart housing societies will be critical cogs in a wheel of growth that is projected for unprecedented scalability going forward.
It is important to mention that EV chargers do not only mean that societies have facilities that support EV charging but also that it has demonstrated a special thinking prowess regarding power management/distribution, clean energy, safety, sustainability, smart features like advertising, payment, announcement, integration with building management systems and many more such aspects. Residential societies that are equipped with EV chargers are today positioning themselves as smart, a crucial factor to ensure property valuation continues to appreciate compared to conventional societies.
Looking forward
As electric vehicles become the mainstays of transportation, public or private, the role of EV chargers will continue to be appreciated in the future. The times that we are living through highlight an important intersection of technology and sustainability, comparable to when the first petrol pumps or the first coal depots for steam engines were being set up. For EV chargers, large housing societies present a unique opportunity to target numerous end users at the same time, while also addressing their concerns of accessibility, convenience and critical support. Smart housing societies equipped with EV chargers are already being considered as premium, and will soon become the benchmark in urban living standards and requirements, critically helping to drive EV adoption rates across urban centres.
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