Driving to their holiday home in the hills of Kumaon from Delhi, Ashok and Nita Gupta had taken their new Volkswagen electric car for a first long ride. They felt a rising panic, however, when still short of their destination, they found themselves running out of battery.
They found a dilapidated charging station in Haldwani, 25 miles from their destination, but spent over an hour sitting under a tree waiting. Indeed, the recharging app only worked on Android phones, not their iPhone. If India is standing on the threshold of being a modern manufacturing superpower, the Guptas did not see much evidence of it. “Luckily there was no one else at the station in front of us. If there had been, I dread to think
