Fortum Charge & Drive, Plug Mobility from Carzonrent join hands

Plug Mobility from Carzonrent India Private Limited, India’s first electric vehicle mobility as a service brand, has partnered with 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 19000 cars to be inducted over the next 5 years across India. Fortum C&D will set up 3200 charging points for Plug Mobility during this period to support energy requirement of the fleet.

As part of the agreement, a total of 3200 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 100,000KW.

Rajiv Kumar Vij Managing Director Carzonrent India Private Limited 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 tons of carbon dioxide emissions in the next five years by introducing 19000 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. We are happy to partner with a pioneer such as Fortum to bolster our efforts towards this. With the company’s significant local presence, backed by the great market potential of EVs in India, we look forward to this collaboration.”

Commenting on the same, Sanjay Aggarwal, President, Fortum India Pvt. Ltd.,said, “We are happy to collaborate with Carzonrent to set up charging infrastructure for four wheelers across the country as a step towards decarbonisation. We at Fortum have been continuously striving to make the benefits of electric mobility accessible to drivers every day for increased EV adoption, whether for private or commercial use. With government subsidies, affordability, and incentives provided to consumers, EV production and usage is picking up pace. Adoption of EVs in India on a larger scale can bring in economic as well as environmental benefits for the country as a whole. The conversation about net zero targets, zero-emission vehicles, and the ‘right’ way to decarbonize transport is gearing up.”

Awadhesh Jha, Executive Director, Fortum Charge & Drive India Pvt. Ltd. added, “Fleet aggregators and large logistics companies are looking for cost-effective and environment-friendly solutions. We are now building a viable solution to cater to this enormous market.4W passenger vehicle segment contributes significantly to Indian GDP. Decarbonisation of this segment will go a long way in mitigating air pollution of Indian cities. This partnership with Carzonrent is a perfect collaborative step between supply and demand side users of EV Charging network. Besides, accessibility of such large network to public in general will also help OEM in launching their products without being worried about “where to charge”. Fortum Charge & Drive India is committed to make charging network seamlessly accessible through its various products like CPO Own, CPO Grow and CPO Connect.”

The charger can 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.