PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE

ANN/THE STATESMAN

On India’s crowded city streets, where the air often hangs heavy with exhaust and impatience, a quiet shift is under way.

Scooters glide past traffic lights without a growl. Three-wheeled rickshaws hum instead of sputter. And in bus depots from Delhi to Bengaluru, charging cables now snake across the ground where diesel hoses once lay.

India’s electric vehicle market, long dismissed as aspirational rather than imminent, is finally gathering speed.

In financial year 2024-2025 alone, the country sold more than 2 million electric vehicles, according to industry estimates.

There are now now nearly 6.5 million EVs on Indian roads, a milestone that would have seemed improbable just a few years ago.

Sales in the April–June 2025 quarter rose 34 percent from a year earlier, capturing about 8 percent of the overall vehicle sales.

Yet the story of India’s EV transition is not one of glossy electric sedans or luxury early adopters. It is a mass-market revolution, unfolding in two-wheelers, three-wheelers and city buses, the unglamorous but indispensable segment of urban mobility.

However we have to remember- This is really a market built on Mopeds and Rickshaws.

More than half of India’s electric vehicle sales come from two-wheelers, with battery-powered scooters and motorcycles increasingly favored by commuters navigating congested cities and rising fuel prices.

Another 36 percent of sales come from three-wheelers, a category in which India has quietly become a global leader in electrification.

In this segment, electric vehicles now account for more than 57 percent of all sales — a penetration rate unmatched in most large economies. For drivers of auto-rickshaws and delivery vehicles, the math is simple: electric vehicles cost less to run, require less maintenance and offer predictable daily economics.

Passenger cars, by contrast, remain a smaller piece of the jigsaw. Electric cars accounted for just 5 percent of car sales in 2025, up from earlier 2-4 percent cent.

This segment is led by domestic manufacturers like Tata Motors and Mahindra, alongside newer entrants such as MG Motor. High upfront costs and patchy charging infrastructure continue to restrain wider adoption.

Overall EV penetration across all categories reached nearly 7-8 percent. However this is way too short of the government’s goal of 30 per cent penetration by 2030.

Nevertheless, behind India’s EV push lies a confluence of urgency and opportunity.

India is the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and its cities regularly rank among the most polluted. Delhi the capital is right now experiencing extremely high AQI levels, which has forced the government to place a number of restrictions on construction and mobility.

Electrifying transport is seen not merely as a technological upgrade but as a public health intervention and hence, a cornerstone of the country’s net-zero aspirations.

The government has consequently leaned heavily into that logic with a series of subsidies, production-linked incentives and mandates for public procurement to help create scale.