EV charger roaming – The key to unlocking seamless mobility in India

Arun Vijayan, Co-founder at Bangalore-based Deepfleet, writes an explainer on EV Charger Roaming as a concept and introduces its basics in the first article of the series.

Deepfleet is an Energy-as-a-Service marketplace that runs an EV roaming platform.

India EV sales have been soaring by over 100% year-on-year in recent periods, and government schemes like FAME II and PM E-DRIVE have provided a strong policy tailwind. As of mid-2025, the country boasts nearly 30,000 public charging stations, a number that is growing rapidly.

However, a critical imbalance is emerging: the pace of public charging infrastructure expansion is not keeping up with the exponential rise in vehicle adoption. This disparity means that when drivers need a charge, available stations are often busy, out of range, or incompatible.

This is where EV roaming emerges as a crucial solution, promising a future where charging your electric vehicle across networks is as simple as making a phone call across different telecom circles.

What is EV Roaming?

At its core, EV roaming is about universal access and interoperability. It is a system that allows an electric vehicle driver to charge their vehicle at a station operated by any provider, using a single account, app, or RFID card from their home service provider.

Think about the convenience of using a single ATM card at any bank’s machine, or how your mobile phone automatically connects to partner networks when you travel. EV roaming aims to bring that same level of seamlessness to electric vehicle charging. It eliminates the need for drivers to download dozens of different operator-specific apps, manage multiple logins, or carry a stack of RFID cards—a common pain point for early EV adopters in India today.

The Ecosystem and the Protocols

Achieving this seamless experience requires a technical handshake between various players in the EV ecosystem. The process is governed by specific, non-proprietary communication standards:

• Charge Point Operator (CPO): This is the entity responsible for the physical installation, operation, and maintenance of the charging stations you see on the ground. Companies like Tata Power, IOCL, BPCL, and Statiq are prominent CPOs in India.

• eMobility Service Provider (eMSP): This is the customer-facing company that provides the driver with the app or RFID card for accessing chargers. The eMSP manages the user’s account, payment, and support.

• OCPP (Open Charge Point Protocol): This protocol ensures that the physical charging station (hardware) can communicate effectively with the CPO’s central management system (software). India’s charging guidelines already mandate OCPP compliance for all new public chargers, ensuring a common language between the charger and its operator.

• OCPI (Open Charge Point Interface): This is the open-source, peer-to-peer protocol that enables different CPO networks to communicate and exchange real-time data, authorization signals, and billing information. It is the glue that connects different networks, turning isolated islands of chargers into a connected, national grid.

Globally, several other protocols facilitate this interoperability. In Europe, the OICP (Open InterCharge Protocol) is used by hubs like Hubject to connect thousands of charging points. Another protocol, eMIP (eMobility Interoperation Protocol), is often used for data exchange and roaming authorization. While OCPI is gaining rapid traction as the global favorite due to its open nature, these varied protocols underscore the global push toward breaking down charging barriers.

The Indian Context: Challenges and Opportunities

India’s EV market presents unique challenges and immense opportunities for roaming. As vehicle numbers rapidly outpace infrastructure growth, reliability becomes paramount.

Average charger uptime often hovers around 60-70%, and a key issue has been the “walled garden” approach, where major CPOs operate proprietary networks, forcing drivers to juggle multiple apps to find the nearest working point.

The lack of a unified national standard, despite the government’s push for open protocols like OCPI, has created a fragmented user experience, which can be a significant psychological barrier to widespread EV adoption.

The fear of being stranded—known as “range anxiety” —is now often replaced by “charging anxiety”: the worry that the one specific app you need for a specific charger won’t work, the payment will fail, or the connector won’t be compatible.

The need to optimize the use of every existing charger makes roaming an immediate necessity. However, the Indian ecosystem is uniquely positioned to adopt an interoperable future. The success of digital public goods such as the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and FASTag demonstrates that India can build and scale multi-party settlement systems efficiently.

Recent roaming partnerships, such as the one between Gentari and Shell India, which provides access to a collective network of over 450 charging points, show that the industry is beginning to break down silos through bilateral agreements.

The Road Ahead

For India to achieve its ambitious goal of 30% EV penetration by 2030, EV roaming must become the norm, not the exception. NITI Aayog’s “Handbook of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Implementation” already advocates for the adoption of open protocols like OCPI.

The path forward requires coordinated action:

• Policy Mandates: The government could set clear, phased targets for interoperability, perhaps leveraging the new PM E-DRIVE scheme to incentivise CPOs to join a common platform. This will create a level playing field for both small and large CPOs.

• Newer Initiatives: We may actually develop better-designed systems to solve EV roaming. We may touch base on this in the upcoming posts in this series.

• Technical Upgrades: Ensuring all existing and new chargers support the necessary open standards (OCPI 2.2 or higher) is essential but unlikely to happen within a reasonable timeline.

By embracing EV roaming, India can create a seamless, reliable, and user-friendly charging experience that builds consumer confidence, encourages long-distance EV travel, and accelerates the nation’s vital transition to sustainable mobility. The future of electric transport in India runs on reliable infrastructure and open data exchange, not fragmented networks and multiple apps.

This article is the first in an interoperability series. In our next instalment, we will delve into the future of charging technology: Native EV Roaming and ISO 15118, which promises an even more seamless Autocharge and “Plug & Charge” experience.

This article was first published in EVreporter Dec 2025 magazine.

Also read: Enabling EV charger roaming in India | Chat with Ravikiran Annaswamy