HoEV Gaurav Rathod

The entire journey started long back in the year 2005. Like every Indian, my first conventional vehicle was a Maruti. 15 years of driving that car, I knew it was time to make a switch. Priorities shifted from a fulfilling driving experience to safety features of the vehicle. I went out looking for conventional cars, and then it struck me, isn’t the health & safety of our Earth paramount?

I worked out the numbers, and as it is widely propagated, owning an EV does reduce operating costs significantly, whilst adhering to the same safety standards as a conventional vehicle. At that moment, I knew I am going to be one of the early adopters of E-Mobility! The charging infrastructure across India was at a very nascent stage when I got my Nexon EV. But even then, I always treated the vehicle not as a liability but as an asset. Fortunately, a fast charger was just 2-3 kms away from my place and the charging was provided free by Tata as the application was in the Beta stage. 

It excites me to see the availability of EV charging infrastructure to grow at the pace that it is! Being a techie, I have a knack for technological advances across all fields and I have voluntarily helped list more than 450 active chargers on a popular EV charging portal used by the EV community pan India. People have named me the “Charger Man”, owing to this feat.
Though I haven’t clocked much kilometres compared to motorists and travellers, my extensive network has helped me garner and spread more information about the EV infrastructure just sitting at home.

Facilitators like goEgo Network, and many other vendors are actively trying to accelerate this process even further. The government is introducing subsidies for the consumer and schemes for the OEMs. It’s only a matter of time till we all switch to Electric Vehicles!