What a charging site has to get right: connectors, protocols and placement

A public charger looks like a box with a cable. Behind it, three separate things have to line up: the electrical connection, the plug and the way the vehicle talks to the charger, and the software link between the charger and whoever runs the network. Each has its own standards, and mixing them up is the most common source of confusion when a site is planned.

Who may build one, and under which rules

India's Ministry of Power issued its guidelines for installing and operating EV charging infrastructure on 17 September 2024, superseding earlier versions. As reported by Renewable Watch, they apply to public, semi-public and private charging stations, and treat charging as a de-licensed activity, so anybody can set up and operate a station. Utilities are to provide connections within 3 to 90 days, depending on the area. The guidelines state density targets of one station every 1 km in urban areas and every 20 km along highways by 2030, and name the Bureau of Energy Efficiency as the central nodal agency, which maintains a nationwide database of public stations.

They also expect public stations to offer fast charging for long-range and heavy-duty vehicles, especially along highways, and set a minimum of 240 kW of charging equipment at e-bus depots.

The plug and the vehicle conversation

The connector standard decides what physically fits and how power and messages flow between car and charger. CharIN, the industry association behind the Combined Charging System, describes CCS as a standards-based system and says ISO 15118-20 is the backbone of its vehicle-to-grid functions for DC charging.

For heavy vehicles, CharIN is developing the Megawatt Charging System, aiming at a charge rate above 1 MW, focused on Class 6, 7 and 8 commercial vehicles. It lists IEC TS 63379 as the official publication for MCS standardisation, and labels its requirements as still under discussion, so treat it as a moving target.

The software conversation

Separately from the plug, a charger needs a way to report status, start sessions and take instructions from a management system. The Open Charge Alliance describes OCPP as the global open communication protocol between charging stations and charging management systems. OCPP 1.6 was released in 2015, OCPP 2.0.1 in 2020 and OCPP 2.1 in 2025. The Alliance says 2.0.1 is intended to replace 1.6 and that the two are not compatible. OCPP 2.0.1 edition 3 was approved as an IEC standard, IEC 63584, in 2024.

The practical point is ownership of the choice. A charger built on an open protocol can be run by more than one back end; one built on a closed protocol ties the owner to a single vendor's software.

Depot or corridor: a different problem each time

The IEA's Global EV Outlook 2025 describes depot charging as the modular starting point for trucks, with high-power en-route charging following later, and notes that truck charging can reach higher utilisation than light-duty charging because logistics operations follow predetermined schedules. Our reading of that difference:

• A depot knows its vehicles, their schedules and their overnight dwell, so the grid connection can be sized to a known fleet.
• A corridor site cannot know who arrives or when, needs higher power per stall, and the grid connection is usually the longest lead item.
• Both need the same open-protocol back end if they are ever to be run as one network.

Electrovolt is the group's EV charging infrastructure business. This is a general explainer. It describes no BFCEV site, truck, network, customer or result.