More than 30 crore vehicles run on India's roads, and the majority burn petrol or diesel. The country's plan to clean them up runs almost entirely through new sales, electric cars, electric scooters and tighter emission limits on the next model to leave the factory. It says far less about the vehicles already out there, which will keep running, and emitting, for a decade or more before anyone retires them.
That silence is where a small industry has set up. Retrofitment takes an existing petrol or diesel car and either rebuilds its drivetrain to add an electric motor and battery to make it cleaner, or strips out the engine altogether. The rules that govern it are still relatively new, and Folks Motor is among the few firms to have opened workshops for it.
The pressure that makes such a business viable is newer still. India's scrappage policy, in force since 2021, made automated fitness tests compulsory for both commercial and private vehicles as of June 2024. Older vehicles that fail them are meant to come off the road. The capital even went further. On July 1, 2025, Delhi launched a policy: diesel cars older than 10 years and petrol cars older than 15 were to be denied fuel in Delhi and five neighbouring districts. But the implementation ran into many technical issues.
Nevertheless, retrofitting is one of the few legal ways out. The conversions fall under an automotive standard, AIS-123. Both the kit and the workshop must be cleared by an agency such as the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) or the International Centre for Automotive Technology (ICAT). Under a draft policy floated in early 2026, Delhi offered ₹50,000 each to the first 1,000 cars converted from engine to electric. There is a catch the sales pitch skates over. Only stripping the engine out and going fully electric changes the fuel on the car's papers and earns a reprieve. A hybrid conversion leaves the engine in, and with it, the car's age.
Bolting on a Second Powertrain
The conversion adds a second, electric powertrain to the one the car already has. Folks brands the platform xEV and the system that runs it ReGeN Drive. It sells the conversion two ways, as a kit fitted to a customer's own car, or as a ready-converted car it certifies and resells. Into the engine bay go an electric motor and a generator. A lithium-ion battery pack sits in the boot, taking up about a quarter of it, along with a motor controller. A converter steps the high battery voltage down to the ordinary 12-volt system that runs the lights and the radio. The petrol engine itself is left in place.
The system works through the car's existing manual gearbox. In electric mode, it drives gear-free from rest to a claimed 60 to 80 kmph. Beyond that, the petrol engine drives through the normal gears, with the motor assisting, and the setup can run as a series, parallel or plug-in hybrid. What marks it out from an electric car is that the driver need never plug in. The battery refills itself as the car runs, drawing on the engine through the generator and recovering energy under braking. After 70 to 100 km of fuel driving, Folks says, it holds around 50 km of electric range, with an optional plug-in socket for those who want one.
For now, the kit fits only a set list of Maruti Suzuki models, all with 1,000cc to 1,500cc petrol engines and manual gearboxes. They run from the Swift and WagonR to the Ertiga and Ciaz. Each car, the company says, is first checked for the condition of its chassis, brakes, suspension, wiring, weight and age. Afterwards, it is subjected to insulation, high-voltage safety, waterproofing, thermal, and road tests. Folks puts the turnaround at one to three days, and the warranty at two years or 50,000 km.
An Integrator, Not a Manufacturer
Folks sells engineering as its advantage. But when asked which suppliers stand behind the kit, and where it buys its motors, the company would name none, calling the arrangements confidential. The motors, it said, come from a mix of domestic and international suppliers, and depending on the vehicle platform and application, components are sourced from suppliers specialising in electric motors, thermal management, wiring harnesses and other critical subsystems. Its own work is the systems layer, assessing the car, integrating the parts, writing the software that governs them and building the high-voltage safety electronics.
In plain terms, the pieces that actually move the car are bought in, and what Folks makes is the integration and the code. The split is common among retrofitters. It also means the durability of a Folks conversion depends heavily on suppliers.
The Economics, and Who They Suit
Price is one of the obstacles. Folks quotes ₹4 lakh to ₹6 lakh to convert a car, ₹1.5 lakh to ₹2 lakh for a three-wheeler or small commercial vehicle, and ₹8 lakh to ₹10 lakh for a bus. A used version of a BS6 hatchback usually costs less than the lower end of that car figure. The wider evidence is not kind to the private buyer. An analysis in Down To Earth, published by the Centre for Science and Environment, found that the 18 per cent tax on parts makes conversion "unviable in comparison to a new EV." Financing is scarce, it added, and the sums favour fleets over individual owners.
Khurana's defence rests on running cost, which he puts at roughly half, with fleet operators recovering the outlay in 18 to 24 months. Folks' own figures for that saving are not fixed. Its website offers buyers of the kit 70 per cent lower running costs and 60 per cent better mileage. A ready-converted car is advertised at 30 per cent savings and 40 per cent better mileage. The claim shifts with the product. Folks says it has converted more than 250 vehicles. It also claims its parts sit in some 2 lakh two-wheelers, close to 10 lakh three-wheelers and 3 to 4 lakh pieces of farm equipment, but those are components sold to other manufacturers, not cars it has electrified. On the order book, he is frank about the gap. "When the order book is 150 to 250 crore, I have only been able to fulfil 50 to 70 crore," he says, pointing to shortages of semiconductors and raw materials.
The Carmakers' Objection
The industry Folks wants to work alongside is, for now, mostly sceptical. Only a few global carmakers, Toyota among them, have shown any warmth to retrofitting. Swapping an engine for a battery and motor, experts say, changes a car's weight, software and handling in ways that need engineering built into the platform and cannot be added afterwards.
Khurana meets the safety charge directly. "If these platforms were really unsafe," he asks, "why did ARAI do all the work on them in the first place?" He reads the resistance as commercial rather than technical, since every car converted is a new one unsold. "Even now, when carmakers oppose retrofitment, we tell them this market will grow," he says. His patience with the argument at home, however, is thinning. "India will question everything," he says. "It has been questioning retrofitment even as the world adopts it." The company is now pushing into Europe and export markets.
None of this settles whether the conversions work as promised, because the evidence is not yet in. Autocar Professional has not driven a Folks-converted car or visited its plants at Sonipat and Manesar, and the figures here are the company's own. What a fair test would look for is clear enough, and it follows from the company's own claims. Whether the 50 km of electric range holds up after a few years with a battery charged by the engine rather than a plug. Whether a kit fitted in a workshop performs as well as one on a test bench. The problem Folks is chasing is real, and the country has not found a better answer for the fleet it already owns. On the evidence so far, the idea holds promise and is worth considering.