Kia India Adds 23,500 Charging Points Through Jio-bp Partnership

Kia India Adds 23,500 Charging Points via Jio-bp Partnership

Kia India has tied up with Jio-bp to fold the oil major's electric-vehicle charging network into the MyKia app, giving owners of Kia EVs access to more than 23,500 public charging points across the country. The partnership, announced this week, is one of the largest single additions to a carmaker's own charging map in India and attacks the biggest worry for first-time EV buyers: whether they can find a working charger away from home.

Under the deal, more than 7,000 Jio-bp charging points spread across over 1,100 sites in more than 300 cities will appear inside K-Charge, Kia's in-app charging platform. Drivers can locate hubs, plan routes, start and monitor sessions, and pay without juggling a second app. Jio-bp, the Reliance-BP joint venture, runs DC fast chargers rated between 60 kW and 480 kW along major highways and reports network uptime of 96 per cent, a figure that matters as much as raw charger count.

Charging integration	Detail
Jio-bp points added to K-Charge	Over 7,000
Jio-bp sites and cities	1,100-plus sites, 300-plus cities
Total points on K-Charge	Over 23,500
Jio-bp charger range	60 kW to 480 kW DC fast
Reverse access	125 Kia DC fast chargers added to Jio-bp pulse

The arrangement works both ways. Around 125 of Kia's active DC fast chargers at dealerships, and future units, will progressively be listed on Jio-bp's pulse charging app, so the two networks feed each other rather than compete. The companies have not given a timeline for completing the two-way integration. It follows a February tie-up with Bharat Petroleum that added more than 3,000 charging points to K-Charge.

What It Means for Buyers

For Kia EV owners the practical gain is route planning and billing from one app instead of three, and a meaningful jump in highway coverage. For the wider market it underlines a quiet shift: charging access is becoming a marketing weapon for carmakers, not just an infrastructure problem for the government. India had about 52,718 public charging stations as of July 2026, including 16,561 fast chargers, a fraction of what a mass EV market needs, so aggregating existing networks is a faster fix than building new ones. Estimate your running costs on our EV cost calculator and browse the latest EV coverage on our news desk.

(Sources: Kia India and Jio-bp announcement via electrive.com, October 19, 2026; Fortune India on India's charging network, October 20, 2026. Images: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.)

::KEY_NUMBERS:: Jio-bp points added | over 7,000 Total on K-Charge | over 23,500 Jio-bp sites | 1,100-plus India public chargers | 52,718 (July 2026) ::TLDR:: Jio-bp's network now appears inside Kia's K-Charge app More than 7,000 points across 1,100 sites and 300-plus cities Kia's 125 DC fast chargers will join Jio-bp's pulse app Aims at route planning and billing from a single app ::GLOSSARY:: K-Charge | Kia's in-app EV charging platform inside the MyKia app DC fast charger | a high-power charger that refills a battery quickly Charger-to-EV ratio | the number of vehicles sharing each public charging point ::PULLQUOTE:: Charging access has quietly become a carmaker's marketing weapon, not just the government's infrastructure headache. ::PROS:: Single app for locating, charging and paying Large jump in highway coverage Jio-bp reports 96 per cent network uptime ::CONS:: Integration timeline not yet announced Access across networks is not the same as newly installed chargers India's charger-to-EV ratio remains far behind global norms ::POLL:: What stops you buying an EV today? || Charging access || Upfront price || Range anxiety || Nothing, I am ready ::SOURCES:: Kia India and Jio-bp, via electrive.com; Fortune India