The biggest financial uncertainty around electric trucks in India may be shifting from whether the vehicle can complete its route to what it will be worth at the end of its first operating life, according to electric mobility financing company Vertelo.
With relatively few electric trucks having completed a full ownership cycle in India, financiers and fleet operators have little historical data to estimate their resale value. Leasing could help address this by transferring the residual-value risk from the truck operator to the lessor, Vertelo Chief Executive Officer Sandeep Gambhir said during a panel discussion organised by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).
“The biggest phobia that used to be on electrification was, will it get me from point A to point B,” Gambhir said. “That fear has been taken out, but the fear still remains, what is the residual value of this asset?”
That uncertainty matters because residual value — the expected value of a vehicle at the end of a financing or leasing period — influences how much lenders and leasing companies are willing to finance and at what cost.
The diesel truck market has decades of transaction history. Financiers can therefore estimate how much a truck of a particular age, configuration and usage is likely to fetch in the second-hand market.
Electric trucks do not yet have that track record.
“Today, a diesel truck, a diesel bus, a petrol car, all of us know [the residual value]. Why? Because multiple use cases, thousands and thousands of disposals have happened, so you very well can predict the secondary life and the secondary price of the asset,” Gambhir said.
“In case of electric, no manufacturer can put that number because the trucks or buses haven’t seen a primary life,” he added.
Leasing Shifts Residual Value Risk to Lessors
An operating lease changes who takes this risk. Instead of buying the truck and worrying about its value several years later, a fleet operator pays to use the vehicle for an agreed period and returns it to the leasing company at the end.
“In an operating lease, you drive for five-six years, give the asset back, the RV risk is on the lessor,” Gambhir said.
The lessor takes a view that, by the time the vehicle is returned, a secondary market will have developed or the asset can be redeployed elsewhere.
Gambhir said taking residual value into account could also lower the amount of the vehicle’s cost that has to be recovered from the operator during the lease period.
“If I can take the RV risk where I can shave off 15% of the cost of the asset, I think you will be better off,” he said.
The model is particularly relevant for electric trucks because their upfront prices remain significantly higher than equivalent diesel vehicles.
Mathsy Kutty, representing the Climate Pledge initiative co-founded by Amazon, said smaller fleet operators in particular could find it difficult to finance vehicles costing around two to 2.5 times as much as diesel trucks.
“So chances are, we strongly feel that the leasing model, or battery as a service, or per kilometre costing, that’s something that the small fleet operators might be able to consider, because then the whole heavy upfront investment goes away.”
Vertelo provides leasing, financing, charging and fleet-management solutions for electric vehicles. The platform is backed by the Green Climate Fund in association with Macquarie Asset Management. In May 2025, Tata Motors and Vertelo also signed an agreement to provide customised leasing options across Tata Motors’ electric commercial vehicle portfolio.
India's Electric Commercial Vehicle Sales Gather Pace
The financing question is becoming more important as India’s electric commercial vehicle market expands rapidly from a small base.
Electric commercial vehicle retail sales rose 120.6% to 19,454 units in FY26, from 8,820 units in FY25, according to data released by the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA).
The pace picked up further in the first quarter of FY27. Electric CV registrations stood at 2,245 units in April, 2,400 units in May and 3,214 units in June, taking April-June registrations to about 7,859 units. That was around 144% higher than the 3,215 units registered in the same three months a year earlier.
However, much of India’s electric CV volume still comes from smaller commercial vehicles rather than medium and heavy trucks. Vahan-derived FY26 data showed electric light goods carriers accounted for around 70% of e-CV registrations, while buses contributed another 26%.
That means the market for heavy electric trucks, where vehicle prices and financing exposure are significantly higher, remains at an early stage.
Real-World Pilots Ease Electric Truck Range Concerns
At the same time, real-world pilots are beginning to address another risk that previously made lenders and operators cautious: whether electric trucks could perform the same work as diesel vehicles.
The Climate Pledge’s Lane Shift programme tested electric trucks on the Golden Quadrilateral as well as the Bengaluru-Chennai corridor.
Mathsy said the programme found no fundamental issue with the operational viability of medium and heavy electric trucks.
“We saw that in all cases there was no issue with the ranges that the OEMs were citing or the turnaround times that are needed,” she said.
The economics were particularly favourable for applications where trucks travelled more than 400-450 kilometres a day, or around 12,000-15,000 kilometres a month, she said.
The demonstration also led to a 4.2-times increase in electric truck orders for the fleet operator involved and resulted in five long-term contracts, according to Mathsy.
Outlook: Financing Remains the Next Hurdle for Electric Trucks
If operating performance is increasingly established, the next challenge for financiers is understanding how the vehicles, particularly their batteries and other high-value components, retain value over time.
For Gambhir, this is where leasing can play a larger role. Rather than asking fleet operators to take the technology, financing and resale risks together, specialised lessors can hold the asset on their own balance sheets and take a longer-term view on its eventual value.
He said the conversation around electric truck financing therefore needs to move beyond just the upfront vehicle price or interest rate.
For now, however, he expects electric heavy trucks to remain largely a play for medium and large fleet operators that have predictable routes, charging infrastructure and stronger OEM support.
As electric truck volumes rise, the creation of a used-vehicle market and clearer data on battery health and resale values could eventually make financing easier. Until then, leasing companies willing to carry that uncertainty could become an important bridge between electric truck manufacturers and fleet operators.