The transportation sector of the world is in the transformation stage, shifting from conventional fossil fuel-powered vehicles to zero or ultra-low tailpipe emission vehicles. To support this transformation, a proper charging station (CS) infrastructure in combination with information technology, smart distributed energy generating units, and favorable government policies are required. The motive of this paper is to address the key aspects to be taken care of while planning for the charging station infrastructure for electric vehicles. The paper also provides major indagation and developments in planning and technological aspects that are going on for the enhancement of the design and efficient management of charging station infrastructure. The paper addresses the present scenario of India related to electric vehicle charging station developments. The paper specially provides a critical review on the research and developments in the charging station infrastructure, the problems associated with it, and the efforts that are going on for its standardization to help the researchers address the problems.

Air pollution is accountable for various long-term and short-term respiratory diseases and even deaths. Air pollution is normally associated with a decreasing life expectancy. Governments have been implementing strategies to improve air quality. However, natural events have always played an important role in the concentration of air pollutants. In Australia, the lockdown period followed the Black Summer of 2019–2020 and coincided with the season of prescribed burns. This paper investigates the changes in the concentration of criteria pollutants such as particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and sulphur dioxide. The air quality data for the lockdown period in 2020 was compared with the pre-lockdown period in 2020 and with corresponding periods of previous years from 2016 to 2019. The results were also compared with the post-lockdown scenario of 2020 and 2021 to understand how the concentration levels changed due to behavioural changes and a lack of background events. The results revealed that the COVID-19 restrictions had some impact on the concentration of pollutants; however, the location of monitoring stations played an important role.