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India's Electric Tractor Market: Bottlenecks, Economics and Growth Pathways

Angitha Suresh — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 20:06:42

The Indian tractor industry is currently in a strong growth phase, with volumes expected to reach a new peak of around 1.2 million units in FY2027. Demand has remained healthy over the past three years, supported by stable farm output, favourable monsoon conditions, better financing availability and continued policy support, including initiatives such as GST 2.0.

While the sector will continue to be influenced by rural income trends and monsoon performance, it is also likely to undergo a gradual medium to long-term shift towards premiumisation, higher mechanisation and technology-led upgrades. In this evolving landscape, the growing emphasis on emission reduction is expected to shape future powertrain choices, with electrification emerging as one of the possible long-term pathways.

India’s vehicle electrification journey has so far been driven primarily by two-wheelers, three-wheelers, buses, passenger vehicles and, to a limited extent, small commercial vehicles. Adoption has largely been concentrated in urban mobility applications, while farm equipment has seen only limited traction. Although a few OEMs have introduced electric tractor models, supported by rising market interest and regulatory acceptance for select products, broad-based commercial adoption remains at a nascent stage.

From an economic perspective, electric tractors present a favourable total cost of ownership and payback proposition despite their materially higher upfront cost. The advantage is supported by lower running expenses, fewer moving parts and reduced maintenance requirements. As per ICRA estimates, TCO savings are estimated at around 15-20%, while the payback period for the incremental upfront cost, after factoring in battery replacement costs, is expected to be around 4-5 years. However, the actual savings may vary depending on the nature of tractor application and daily operating hours.

Industry feedback from OEMs and dealers indicates that adoption remains constrained by high acquisition costs, particularly for small and marginal farmers, limited product awareness, uncertainty around operating performance and battery economics, insufficient targeted incentives, weak rural charging infrastructure, residual value concerns and cautious lender appetite. Faster adoption of electric tractors will depend on improved affordability, reliable power and torque delivery under variable load conditions, longer operating hours and adequate battery capacity.

The shift towards electric tractors is expected to be gradual over the next few years. In the initial phase, small tractors with predictable daily usage patterns and more favourable cost economics could see relatively faster adoption. However, wider penetration across tractor segments will require a supportive ecosystem comprising targeted farmer incentives, an enabling financing environment, rural charging infrastructure and greater localisation of key components. Given the large installed base of tractors, retrofitting may offer a viable option for specific applications like horticulture and institutional fleets. However, scaling retrofit solutions more broadly could remain challenging because of the high torque requirements, battery-packaging limitations and varied operating conditions associated with tractor usage.

Overall, EV penetration in the tractor segment remains negligible, and mass adoption is unlikely in the near term. Nevertheless, electric tractors could develop into an important long-term decarbonisation pathway for Indian agriculture, provided cost economics improve, and the broader ecosystem evolves through targeted policy support, accessible financing, reliable rural charging infrastructure and stronger after-sales service networks.

Srikumar Krishnamurthy is the Senior Vice President and Co-Group Head, Corporate Ratings at ICRA Limited. All views expressed are the author's own.

Decarbonising the Furrow: Inside India’s Policy & Subsidy Roadmap for Electric Tractors

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 12:54:58

India’s agricultural mechanisation landscape is witnessing a structural shift. While internal combustion engine (ICE) tractors have long served as the backbone of rural farm operations, volatile diesel prices, rising input costs, and tightening emission mandates are accelerating the business case for battery-electric alternatives.

To overcome initial capital expenditure barriers and promote green mobility across the rural heartland, both the Central Government and forward-looking State Governments have rolled out targeted financial subsidies, testing norms, and infrastructure incentives.

Central Policy Framework: The SMAM Breakthrough

The watershed policy shift for zero-emission farm mechanisation arrived when the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare officially notified Battery-Electric Agricultural Tractors alongside conventional internal combustion machinery under the updated Operational Guidelines for the Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanization (SMAM) under PM-Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (PM-RKVY).

1. Subsidy Slabs Under SMAM

Under the SMAM guidelines, direct financial support is calibrated by tractor power output (PTO HP) and applicant category:

General Category Beneficiaries: Financial assistance ranging from ₹1.6 lakh to ₹5.2 lakh, depending on the tractor’s power bracket.
Special Category Beneficiaries (SC, ST, Small & Marginal Farmers, Women Farmers): Enhanced assistance ranging from ₹2.0 lakh to ₹6.5 lakh.
High-Capacity Deployments (>40 PTO HP): Promoted primarily through Custom Hiring Centres (CHCs) and Farm Machinery Banks (FMBs) to optimise asset utilisation, with individual ownership capped at 25% of the total state allocation.

2. The FMTTI Certification Prerequisite

To qualify for central subsidies, electric tractor models must be tested and formally certified by designated central Farm Machinery Training & Testing Institutes (FMTTIs), such as CFMTTI Budni.

Industry adoption accelerated when OEMs like TI Clean Mobility (Montra Electric)—a Murugappa Group company—logged over 50,000 cumulative field-duty hours across 200+ pilot units. This empirical duty-cycle data provided CFMTTI Budni with the operational baselines required to formulate India’s first commercial testing, safety, and AIS-adjacent standards for electric farm machinery. The Montra Electric E-27 (<30 HP) subsequently became the country's first certified e-tractor under this framework, paving the way for higher-output 45–55 HP segments currently in the testing pipeline.

State-Level Subsidies and Initiatives

States are actively supplementing central allocations through regional EV policies, agricultural budgets, and fiscal concessions. Haryana and Maharashtra, in particular, are backing electric agricultural machinery aggressively.

State	Subsidy Quantum	Additional State-Level Incentives
Haryana	Up to ₹5,00,000 grant (for first 1,000 e-tractors)	100% road tax and registration fee waivers; concessional agri-power tariffs; stamp duty exemptions on charging land; cooperative machinery grants.
Maharashtra	Up to ₹1,50,000 financial assistance (capped at 15% of ex-factory cost)	100% motor vehicle tax & registration fee exemption; fast-charging infrastructure Viability Gap Funding (up to ₹5–10 lakh for high-power DC hubs); project grants up to 80% for FPO Custom Hiring Centres via MahaDBT.
Other States (e.g., UP, Gujarat, Punjab)	Quota integration under SMAM/RKVY windows	Empanelment via state DBT portals (e.g., i-Khedut, UP Agri Portal); priority linkage with FPO machinery banks.

Asset Non-Alienation & Frequency Guardrails

To curb speculative procurement and secondary market arbitrage, subsidized e-tractors carry a mandatory 5-to-7-year operational lock-in period, during which equipment cannot be hypothecated, transferred, or sold outside the local cluster. Furthermore, state portals enforce a strict ceiling of one tractor per household every 3 to 7 years via digital land registries and national identity verification.

Operational and Economic Value Proposition

Beyond upfront capital support, electric tractors offer compelling operating economics compared to conventional diesel machinery:

PMSM Efficiency & Lower Running Costs: While diesel engines suffer steep thermal and frictional losses during low-speed, high-draft operations, Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors (PMSMs) deliver flat, peak torque right from zero RPM. This powertrain efficiency slashes farm-level operating and scheduled maintenance costs by 70% to 80% compared to equivalent ICE tractors.
Runtime & Thermal/Duty Cycles: Current pack chemistries (primarily LFP) deliver 4 to 5 hours of continuous heavy draft and PTO runtime per charge cycle. These packs are paired with ruggedised BMS architectures engineered to withstand rural ambient temperature spikes and fluctuating three-phase grid power.
Ergonomics & NVH: Eliminating low-frequency engine shudder, vibration, and tailpipe exhaust significantly reduces operator fatigue while preventing soot deposition on sensitive standing cash crops.
Synergy with PM-KUSUM: Pairing e-tractor charging with solar agricultural feeder pumps under the PM-KUSUM scheme enables farmers to power machinery using captive daytime solar energy, driving recurring energy costs close to zero.

Deployment Architecture: Retail Farmers vs. Community Aggregators

Retail Adoption Streamlining

For individual farmers, the operational viability of e-tractors hinges on robust API integration among FMTTI product certifications, state DBT clearinghouses, and land record registries (such as PM-Kisan, Khasra, and 7/12 records) to streamline subsidy disbursements without bureaucratic delay.

Institutional Scaling via CHCs & TaaS

Given the capital intensity of >40 PTO HP machinery, the immediate volume inflection point lies in Custom Hiring Centres (CHCs) and Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs). Backed by 40%–80% project assistance schemes, FPOs are pioneering Tractor-as-a-Service (TaaS) models—offering electric tillage and haulage at 30%–40% below diesel rental benchmarks while securing predictable operational returns.

Demystifying NABARD’s Role in Tractor Financing

A common misconception in the rural lending ecosystem is that NABARD directly provides a retail "Tractor Subsidy" to farmers.

NABARD (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) is an apex development and refinancing institution, not a direct cash subsidy or retail lending agency. It does not disburse tractor purchase subsidies directly into individual bank accounts. Instead, it supports the ecosystem through two primary mechanisms:

Refinancing Commercial & Rural Banks: NABARD extends concessional, long-term refinance lines to Scheduled Commercial Banks (SBI, PNB, etc.), Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), and State Cooperative Banks. These institutions then disburse term loans for farm mechanisation at favourable agricultural interest rates (typically 7%–10.5%).
Channelising Agency for Central Capital Subsidies: Capital subsidies are funded under the Ministry of Agriculture's SMAM / RKVY programmes. NABARD facilitates the corresponding institutional credit flows and project financing models for FPOs and Custom Hiring Centres.

The Road Ahead: Institutional & Policy Recommendations

To translate policy intent into widespread rural adoption, five strategic interventions are critical:

Accelerate State-Level Empanelment: State Agriculture Departments must rapidly list FMTTI-approved electric models on their local subsidy portals, removing administrative bottlenecks for early adopters.
Dedicated 10% Green Quota: States should carve out a minimum 10% reservation within their annual agricultural mechanisation budgets exclusively for zero-emission electric tractors.
Public Fleet Mandates: While smallholder farmers remain sensitive to initial sticker prices, public sector bodies and urban local bodies (ULBs) can absorb upfront capital costs to capture lifecycle operational savings. Public utility tractors operate on predictable, geo-fenced routes with depot-based overnight charging. Mandating 100% zero-emission procurement for non-road public fleets will provide an immediate, aggregated demand anchor for domestic OEMs:
- Municipal Solid Waste & ULBs: Replaces inefficient, high-emission diesel haulage during stop-start urban waste collection with high-torque, zero-tailpipe-emission electric duty cycles.
- Water & Irrigation Works: Enables clean, low-speed trailing and maintenance along canals and treatment facilities with captive grid access.
- Government Demonstration Farms: Institutions such as the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), and State Agricultural Universities should deploy e-tractors on demonstration plots to build regional farmer confidence.
Harmonising Crop Residue Management (CRM) Subsidies: Operations during the compressed 3-to-4-week post-harvest window are exceptionally diesel-heavy. The Ministry of Agriculture should explicitly include electric tractors under the specialized CRM subsidy framework across the northern paddy belt (Punjab, Haryana, and Western UP). Deploying high-torque electric powertrains for both in-situ mulching/drilling and ex-situ biomass baling transforms stubble abatement into an emissions-free loop.
Agri-Aligned Credit & BaaS Architecture: Linear monthly bank amortisation schedules are fundamentally misaligned with seasonal crop cycles. RBI and NABARD should formalise bi-annual, post-harvest repayment models aligned with Rabi and Kharif harvest realizations. Concurrently, integrating Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) into SMAM guidelines will allow farmers to finance the bare chassis at diesel parity while treating battery packs as operational, pay-per-use assets.

Farm mechanisation once liberated the Indian farmer from manual toil; today, electrification can liberate agriculture from the volatility of fossil fuels. By aligning targeted policy with scalable electric powertrain technology, India stands at the threshold of a silent revolution—proving that agricultural productivity and decarbonisation can thrive under the very same green current.

"Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Anusandhan"

Tajinder Singh is the Head – Government & Institutional Relations, TI Clean Mobility (Montra Electric). All views expressed are the author's own.

Powering Vehicle Development with GPU-Accelerated Fluid Solutions

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 11:59:53

The automotive industry is now under pressure to develop and launch vehicles faster while also simultaneously managing greater product complexity. The transition to electric vehicles, increasing software content and the growing number of features and variants are stretching engineering resources and making development timelines increasingly difficult to compress. The traditional approach was to rely heavily on physical prototypes and testing, but it is no longer sufficient as manufacturers need to explore a much larger design space.

The development timeline illustrates the shift pretty clearly. Traditional vehicle development can take around 50 months from development through physical prototyping, testing and validation to start of production. Simulation-driven development has the potential to bring that timeline closer to 24 months, while the next generation of increasingly data-driven development approaches points toward further reductions.

The fundamental principle is pretty straightforward: move validation earlier in the development process, or shift left, so that more design decisions can be evaluated virtually before committing to physical hardware.

Moving more work into virtual development creates its own set of challenges for automotive engineering teams. High-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models can involve hundreds of millions of computational cells and transient physics that require substantial computing resources.

Engineers need both speed and accuracy. And increasing one at the expense of the other will not solve the development problem. This is where advances in computing are becoming significant.

Speed that does not Compromise Engineering Confidence

The mobility industry has been exploring different ways to accelerate CFD, including improved numerical methods, parallel computing, faster pre-processing and GPU-based computing. Each has a key role to play. Faster meshing, for example, can directly increase the number of design variants that an engineer can evaluate in a day. Simulation has demonstrated Rapid Octree meshing by reducing the meshing time for a 300-million-cell model from approximately 10 hours to less than an hour, i.e., more than 10x the improvement. And such reductions have translated into the ability to assess two new or three modified designs in roughly the time previously required for one.

The next opportunity lies in the solver itself. Fluent's Native GPU Solver is designed specifically to take advantage of GPU computing for the CFD solution process. The distinction is important because not every GPU-enabled application uses the GPU in the same way.

In a conventional GPU-accelerated approach, portions of a computation may be offloaded from the CPU to a separate GPU backend. This can deliver meaningful acceleration, but the overall workflow can still be constrained by the parts of the application that remain CPU-dependent. Amdahl's law provides a useful way of understanding the limitation: if only part of a workload is accelerated, the unaccelerated portion eventually becomes the bottleneck.

A native GPU approach takes a path that is different. Rather than relying on CPU offloading, Fluent's GPU solver has been developed from the ground up to run natively on GPU hardware. The objective is to enable the complete solution process to take advantage of GPU parallelism, while also maintaining the robustness and accuracy expected from a production CFD solver. As automotive models become larger and more detailed, that distinction becomes increasingly pertinent.

From Faster Computation to More Engineering Iterations

The value of faster CFD is not merely that an individual simulation now finishes sooner. The greater benefit is actually what engineers can do with the time that they recover.

From external aerodynamics and under-hood thermal management to battery and electric-motor cooling, HVAC, aeroacoustics, liquid cooling and filling, and water management around vehicle sensors, automotive CFD covers a broad range of applications. And these applications frequently involve turbulence, heat transfer, radiation, multiphase flows, particles and rotating components.

For all these problems, speed can change the development question from ‘Can we run this simulation?’ to ‘How many design alternatives can we evaluate?’

The performance numbers show the true potential. Fluent benchmarks across automotive applications have shown speedups ranging from approximately 5–8X for an air-cooled electric motor and 6–9X for a large external-aerodynamics case, to 10–13X for an EGR valve and 10X for inverter filling. An auto water-wading case has also demonstrated a much larger 230X speedup under the tested configuration.

A large transient case also provided one more useful perspective**, as** a 250-million-cell, 10,000-timestep simulation that required approximately 52 hours on 512 CPU cores was completed in around 40 minutes using 64 GPUs.

Since vehicle development is inherently iterative, such improvements do matter. Aerodynamic surfaces, battery architectures, cooling systems, thermal management strategies and other components all necessitate engineers to explore alternatives and recognize trade-offs. A faster solver gives them more opportunities to do that before physical testing.

It also changes the economics of simulation. The computational workload is tied not just to hardware but also to how long that hardware has to operate. There are also substantial differences in electricity costs for the tested CPU and GPU configurations. This indicates that acceleration can have an impact beyond engineering turnaround time.

What Customers are Seeing

What is increasingly visible in automotive development is the practical value of GPU-accelerated CFD. Here’s how:

Volvo Cars, for example, has worked with Ansys and NVIDIA on aerodynamic simulations for the fully electric EX90. Using eight NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs for the solver, combined with CPU-based meshing, the overall simulation time was reduced from 24 hours to 6.5 hours. The solver itself achieved a 2.5X speed improvement compared with cost-equivalent hardware using 2,016 CPU cores. The significance goes beyond the headline speedup. For an electric vehicle, aerodynamic drag has a direct relationship with energy efficiency and driving range. The ability to perform more aerodynamic studies means engineers can investigate more design possibilities and make more informed decisions earlier in development.

Honda is another example at a substantially larger scale. At NVIDIA GTC 2026, Honda reported achieving 34X faster computation and a 38% reduction in cost using four NVIDIA GB200 GPUs compared with 1,920 cloud-based CPU cores while running high-fidelity, unsteady CFD through Ansys Fluent. Honda noted that GPU acceleration made large-scale CFD that had previously been impractical on CPUs feasible. For Honda, this is not simply a computing benchmark. Honda explained that the company was using the capability to accelerate its migration of CFD workloads from CPUs to GPUs while continuing to pursue safer, higher-quality products at an appropriate cost.

These examples reflect a broader movement in the automotive industry. At GTC 2026, NVIDIA highlighted Honda among manufacturers using GPU-accelerated industrial software and noted that such technologies are being used to replace lengthy CPU-based simulations with high-fidelity virtual testing and faster iteration.

The same direction is visible beyond conventional passenger vehicles. Major automotive manufacturers and motorsport organisations are looking at accelerated simulation to evaluate increasingly complex designs under tighter development constraints. For Formula 1 teams in particular, where aerodynamic performance is closely linked to competitive advantage and development cycles are continuous, the ability to obtain high-fidelity results faster can be particularly valuable.

The Next Opportunity: Not Just More Speed

The most interesting consequence of GPU acceleration may ultimately be what it makes possible. When simulation takes days, engineers naturally limit the number of cases they investigate. When the same analysis can be completed in hours, or in some cases minutes, the design process can become much more exploratory. Engineers can consider transient phenomena, larger models and more detailed physics that might previously have been difficult to accommodate within a development schedule.

This is already happening in automotive CFD. The Fluent GPU Solver supports applications spanning external aerodynamics, thermal management, liquid cooling and filling, turbulence, heat transfer, radiation, multiphase flows and rotating machinery.

The next step will be to combine this computational capability with other advances in engineering workflows. Faster pre-processing, GPU-native solvers, improved optimisation techniques and, increasingly, AI-based methods can complement one another. The purpose should not be to replace engineering judgment, but to give engineers the ability to explore more possibilities and extract greater value from every simulation.

Automotive development is ultimately a balance between engineering judgment, physics, cost and time. Faster computing does not change those fundamentals, but it does change the number of questions engineers can ask and answer within a development cycle.

And that is why GPU acceleration is becoming an enabler for a different way of developing vehicles: one in which high-fidelity virtual validation can move further left, design alternatives can be evaluated more extensively, and decisions can be made with greater confidence before physical prototypes are built. It is much more than a hardware upgrade for CFD.

The idea is not to simply make one simulation run faster, but to make the entire vehicle development process more capable of keeping pace with the demands that the next generation of mobility brings with it.

Pravin Nakod is the Director of Applications Engineering at Ansys. All views expressed are the author's own.

Earning Trust on the Road: Why Safety Is Becoming the Biggest Differentiator in Intercity Mobility

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 20:25:10

In intercity mobility, price may attract a passenger once, but trust is what makes them return. Fares can be matched and routes copied. What is harder is building confidence that a bus will arrive as promised and take every passenger home safely.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways recorded 480,583 road accidents and 172,890 deaths in its Road Accidents in India 2023 report, with over-speeding behind nearly seven in ten of those crashes. The report linked seven in ten accidents to over-speeding. Safety cannot remain only a compliance requirement. It must become part of the travel experience.

Safety Starts Before the Journey

For an operator, safety begins before boarding. It starts with maintenance, vehicle checks, driver verification, route planning, duty-hour discipline and rest. Passengers may not see these processes, but feel the impact. A maintained bus, rested driver and realistic timetable prevent problems. Comfort is not only about seats or amenities. It is also confidence that the vehicle is maintained, the crew is trained, and the journey monitored.

Punctuality and safety should never work against each other. When a bus is delayed, pressure can build to recover lost time. Operators must plan around traffic, road conditions and breaks. Explaining a delay is better than taking an avoidable risk.

The real test of a mobility company is not how it performs when everything goes as planned, but how responsibly it responds when something does not.

Technology Must Lead to Action

Live GPS tracking, speed monitoring, route-deviation alerts and driver-fatigue detection can help identify risks. But technology matters only when it leads to action.

Premium buses use systems that detect driver drowsiness and trigger alerts. Delays should never become a reason to compromise safety.

Solo Women Travellers Set the Standard

A woman travelling alone on an overnight bus provides one of the most honest checks of an operator’s safety systems. Her experience depends on whether the boarding point is clear, the crew is verified, the bus can be tracked and support is available when required.

Women-only seats, live journey sharing, OTP-based boarding, verified crew and round-the-clock assistance are no longer premium extras. They are increasingly becoming basic requirements for reliable travel.

A sudden pickup change or an unreachable crew member can make a passenger feel unsafe, regardless of how comfortable the bus itself may be.

When a solo woman feels confident enough to book again, it is a strong indication that the underlying system is working for everyone.

Trust Will Decide the Winners

As intercity mobility grows, more operators will invest in vehicles, routes and technology. But growth without strong systems can increase existing problems.

The next phase of intercity mobility will therefore be shaped not just by the number of routes or buses an operator adds, but by how consistently it delivers safe, reliable and accountable journeys.

The operators that succeed will focus on responsible driving, trained crews, clear communication and accountability when something goes wrong. They will treat regulation as the minimum standard, not the final goal.

Every ticket represents a reason to travel. It could be a student going for an interview, a professional returning home, or a family beginning a holiday. An operator carries not only passengers, but also their plans and trust.

The safest journey is the one passengers have little to say about because everything worked as it should. Building that uneventful reliability, night after night and route after route, is how trust is earned.

Prashant Kumar is the Co-founder & CEO of zingbus. All views expressed are the author's own.

Beyond EVs: The Growing Importance of Automotive Electronics in Modern Vehicles

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 15:03:58

For a decade, the automotive industry has argued about powertrains. Meanwhile, a quieter shift has been rewriting what a vehicle actually is. Electronics, not electrification alone, now decide how a car is engineered, priced and experienced. In 2000, electronics were just 18 per cent of a new car's cost.

By 2030, Deloitte estimates, they will make up nearly half. The supply side, on the other hand, is also working to keep pace. PwC projects the global semiconductor market will cross USD 1 trillion by 2030, with automotive as its second-fastest-growing segment, behind only AI servers.

Here, one detail matters most. PwC expects EVs to reach only about half of global sales by 2030. The other half will still run on fuel and will keep becoming more electronic. What multiplies electronic content is not the powertrain but intelligence. Chip content per vehicle rises tenfold, from under USD 500 with basic driver assistance to over USD 5,000 at higher autonomy.

Vehicle electronics, in short, is every vehicle's story.

India Reaches an Electronic Inflection

India's component industry just had its best year ever. ACMA's FY2025-26 review reports a turnover of Rs 7.60 lakh crore (USD 85.9 billion), up 12.7 per cent and double its size five years ago. The trade data hides the more telling number.

Exports grew 5 per cent while imports jumped 13 per cent to USD 25.4 billion, producing a USD 1.37 billion trade deficit, India's first in three years. Look at what crosses the border. India exports engine, transmission and steering parts. It imports advanced technology components.

Put simply, India exports the vehicle's mechanical past and imports its electronic future. Closing that gap is now a funded government policy. The auto PLI scheme has drawn ₹ 35,657 crore, the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme has a ₹40,000 crore outlay, and Semiconductor Mission 2.0 targets domestic chip capability.

The goal is official too. IBEF, a Ministry of Commerce trust, projects a USD 200 billion component industry by 2030, with electronics already accounting for 11 per cent of OEM supplies. One figure stands out. EV-specific parts were just 4.6 per cent of OEM supplies in FY26.

The electronic build-up is happening in every vehicle, whatever powers it. That is why the opportunity is far bigger than the EV debate.

The Cabin Is the New Competitive Arena

Buyers no longer compare a car with other cars. They compare it with their phone.

Connected infotainment, parking cameras, fast charging and clean cabin air have moved from luxury to expectation, and now into regulation. Regulation turns electronics from a selling point into a requirement.

Bharat NCAP, the government's official star-rating programme, scores cars on safety-assist technology, while AIS-140 has made telematics standard in commercial fleets. Once a feature becomes a star on a label, it stops being optional. The supplier who localises it first wins the volume. Indian conditions add their own demands.

Polluted air makes cabin purification a health feature. Indian roads make tyre safety and roadside self-reliance real engineering challenges. The opportunity extends past the showroom too. The aftermarket grew 9 per cent to USD 12.3 billion, serving the millions of vehicles already on the road.

From Innovation to Automation

The winners will share a profile. They will run R&D in India, because Indian heat, dust and price points punish products designed elsewhere. They will meet global quality standards and build affordable products that last. They will co-develop with OEMs, as suppliers are integrated into a vehicle years before purchase orders are placed.

Their journey runs from innovation to automation. While EVs dominate the headlines, the data reveals a more profound narrative. An industry doubled in five years. Electronics are nearing half the cost of a car.

The trade deficit maps exactly onto what India has yet to localise. Every vehicle leaving an Indian plant is becoming an electronics product. The industry that understands these trends first will not just supply the future vehicle. It will define it.

Pavan Puri is the Founder of Greencore Electronics. All views expressed are the author's own.

Beyond EVs: What Will Drive India’s Next Battery Growth Cycle?

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:11:06

For several years, the battery conversation in India has been closely linked to electric vehicles. That was expected. EVs created a large new market for lithium-ion batteries, brought battery manufacturing into sharper focus and accelerated investment across the value chain.

But the next phase of battery growth is unlikely to come from mobility alone.

India is adding renewable-energy capacity at a rapid pace. As solar and wind become a larger part of the power mix, the challenge is no longer only about generating electricity. It is also about storing it and making it available when and where it is needed.

That is where the battery opportunity starts to become much larger.

Storage could become the next major growth engine

Energy storage is likely to be one of the strongest drivers of battery demand in the coming years. The National Electricity Plan (Generation) projects a BESS requirement of 47.24 GW/236 GWh by 2031–32, with an estimated investment of about ₹3.49 lakh crore.

These are significant numbers, but the more important point is what they represent.

Renewable power does not always match the timing of electricity demand. Solar generation, for example, is concentrated during daylight hours, while electricity consumption continues into the evening. Storage can help bridge that gap.

At the grid level, batteries can provide flexibility and help manage peak demand. For commercial and industrial users, they can support backup power and power-quality requirements. As data centres, telecom networks and other power-intensive infrastructure expand, reliable storage will become increasingly relevant.

This makes batteries an infrastructure requirement, not just an automotive component.

The demand base is becoming more diverse

EVs will remain an important source of battery demand. At the same time, the market is becoming much broader.

BESS, telecom, UPS, industrial backup, solar-plus-storage and other distributed-energy applications are creating additional demand. Each of these applications comes with different technical and commercial requirements.

A battery designed for an electric two-wheeler has a very different operating profile from one used for grid storage. Similarly, a telecom or industrial application may place greater emphasis on reliability, operating life and serviceability.

This means the battery industry will increasingly have to become application-focused.

Scale will matter, but scale by itself will not be enough. Performance, safety, consistency and lifecycle economics will become equally important as customers become more informed and storage moves into critical applications.

Manufacturing depth will matter more than headline capacity

India’s battery opportunity should not be measured only by the number of gigawatt-hours of manufacturing capacity being announced. The bigger question is how much of the value chain can be developed within the country.

Cells are an important part of the ecosystem, but they are not the entire ecosystem. Battery management systems, electronics, thermal management, pack engineering, testing, quality control, recycling and software will all play a larger role as the industry matures.

India has already taken steps in this direction through the Production Linked Incentive scheme for Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) battery manufacturing, with an outlay of ₹18,100 crore to establish 50 GWh of domestic ACC manufacturing capacity. The government has also stated that 40 GWh of the targeted 50 GWh capacity has been awarded to four beneficiary firms.

The next challenge is to build the ecosystem around this capacity. That means developing reliable supply chains, skilled talent, technology capabilities and stronger domestic expertise in battery engineering and testing. Localisation should not simply mean assembling more battery packs. It should mean building deeper capabilities across the value chain.

Battery growth will increasingly be linked to renewable energy

India’s energy transition is creating a structural need for storage.

Solar and wind generation are variable by nature. As their contribution to the electricity system increases, flexibility becomes more valuable. Storage can help manage this variability and make renewable power more usable across different periods of the day.

The policy environment is moving in the same direction. The government has introduced a National Framework for Promotion of Energy Storage Systems, guidelines for BESS procurement and other measures to support storage deployment. It has also provided viability gap funding for BESS capacity and introduced measures such as transmission-charge waivers.

Storage is increasingly being treated as part of the power infrastructure rather than as a standalone technology. That shift will have a direct impact on future battery demand.

Safety and lifecycle economics will become decisive

As batteries move into larger and more critical applications, the lowest upfront price cannot remain the only consideration.

Safety, thermal management, degradation, cycle life, serviceability and total lifecycle cost will become much more important in purchasing decisions.

A battery that is cheaper at the time of purchase but requires earlier replacement or delivers inconsistent performance may not be cheaper over its operating life.

This is also why testing and quality control need to become central to battery manufacturing.

Reliability cannot be something that is checked only at the end of the production line. It has to be considered from cell selection and pack design to battery-management systems, manufacturing processes and monitoring after deployment.

Recycling will become an important part of the battery ecosystem

The next phase of battery growth also needs to be more circular.

India’s Battery Waste Management Rules, 2022 establish Extended Producer Responsibility requirements for producers and provide for collection, recycling and refurbishment of waste batteries through the regulatory framework. The Central Pollution Control Board's battery EPR system provides for registration of producers, recyclers and refurbishers and the use of EPR certificates.

This is important for both environmental and economic reasons. Batteries contain materials that retain value after their first life. Recovering these materials and bringing them back into the manufacturing cycle can reduce dependence on virgin resources and strengthen supply-chain resilience.

Over time, recycling should become an integral part of how the battery industry operates rather than an activity considered only at the end of a product’s life.

The next cycle will be bigger than the EV cycle

India’s battery opportunity is moving beyond mobility and into the broader energy system. EVs will remain an important source of demand, but renewable integration, grid flexibility, industrial power requirements, data centres, telecom and distributed storage can significantly widen the market.

Capturing this opportunity will require more than manufacturing scale. It will require capabilities across technology, safety, testing, battery management, recycling and lifecycle management. The companies that can combine scale with reliability and application-specific performance will be better positioned as the market matures.

The next battery growth cycle, therefore, will not be defined by how many batteries India can manufacture alone. It will be defined by how effectively those batteries can support a more renewable, reliable and flexible energy system.

Pratik Kamdar is the Co-Founder & CEO of Neuron Energy. All views expressed are the author's own.

How EV Fleets Are Becoming the Backbone of India’s Electrification

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:02:06

India's electric vehicle (EV) revolution is being led by not individual car buyers but commercial EV fleets like delivery vans, ride-hailing cabs, and logistics trucks.

These high-utilization operations prove the EV business case today, paving the way for mass-market adoption tomorrow. EVs present a host of benefits for both the economy and the environment. Plus, quick charges mean drivers don't lose time in the process. This fleet success builds chargers everywhere and drops prices, so soon the common man can afford an EV too, making tomorrow's roads greener.

Why Fleets Are the Perfect EV Proving Ground

Fleets stick to predictable routes and rack up high daily miles, often over 200-300 km, which gets the most from EV batteries and slashes total costs by 30-50% compared to diesel or CNG vehicles, thanks to cheap electricity costs and reduced maintenance requirements.

Take Delhi, for instance, early trials with electric autos and e-rickshaws slashed fuel costs by over 60%, and drivers pocketed more thanks to way less downtime. Personal cars sit idle most days, but fleets grind 12-16 hours straight, so those savings really pile up quickly.

Companies are now rolling out thousands of EVs, proving it works wonders for the economy and the environment. This clears the path for EVs, making the change safer so two- and three-wheelers, last-mile deliveries, and buses switch to electric first and make money doing it.

The Infrastructure Imperative

Fleet success all comes down to charging you can truly rely on. India's public charging network crossed 29,000 stations by mid-2025, but fleets push for way more, think dense setups lining highways and city streets, loaded with fast 50-150 kW chargers for those quick mid-shift boosts.

You've got to smartly manage the power rush too, using AI to spread out charging times, ease grid pressure, and blend in renewables. Seamless access is a must, one app or RFID card that works across operators, cuts wait times, and lets fleets roam free.

Policy Push and Tier-2/3 Goldmine

Government support supercharges this shift. The e-Amrit portal by NITI Aayog focuses on policies, including the PM E-Drive program, road tax exemptions, and other initiatives intended to promote EVs. As per the draft EV policy of Delhi for 2026-2030, only EV three-wheelers will be allowed to obtain new registration post-January 2027, providing some ideas to other states to follow for electrifying their fleets.

The actual opportunity lies in tier-2 and tier-3 cities such as Jaipur, Lucknow, and Coimbatore. This is because 70% of logistics operations take place in these locations, along with less expensive land. Electrifying here avoids metro congestion while tapping underserved markets, potentially adding millions of EVs faster than metros.

Data-Driven Hubs

Here's the real game-changer rolling in, data from fleet telematics, spilling real-time secrets on peak routes, stop times, and power cravings, so we nail charger spots perfectly, like plopping 100 kW stations at logistics parks that buzz at 95% full tilt.

Cluster those with battery swaps and vehicle-to-grid smarts, and costs drop another 20-30%, with reports showing fleet shifts could hit 40% of India's 2030 EV goals, scaling up to crash battery prices and pull everyday cars right into the electric wave.

Takeaway

EV fleets aren't just going electric; they're creating the strong base for India's whole EV future. With helpful government rules, smart charging stations, and clever data use, we can rush to one million fleet EVs by 2030. This will make daily rides cheap, clean, and electric for everyone, cutting pollution, creating jobs, and saving money on fuel.

Akshit Bansal is the Founder & CEO of Statiq. All views expressed are the author's own.

Indian Roads Need India-Specific ADAS Data Pipelines

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 20:59:42

Every road tells a story. In India, that story often involves a school bus making an unannounced U-turn, three motorcycles racing each other in a lane built for one, and a fog bank appearing out of nowhere. Any technology that claims to assist a driver on Indian roads has to first accept this reality – not simulate it, not approximate it, but actually learn from it.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, or ADAS, are becoming increasingly visible on Indian roads. According to JATO Dynamics, ADAS adoption in India reached 8.3% in the first half of 2025, with more advanced systems growing at over 70% year-on-year.¹ That is a meaningful shift. But adoption is only part of the story. The bigger question is simpler: has this technology actually learned from Indian roads, or is it still relying on foreign models?

The Indian Road Is Its Own Scenario Library

ADAS systems learn by using cameras and sensors on a test vehicle to capture what happens on the road, and that footage is used to teach the system how to respond. How well it responds later depends entirely on the quality of this data. Most of the footage used to train these systems around the world comes from roads with clear lanes, orderly traffic, and predictable behaviour. That is not urban India, and it is certainly not rural India.

Traffic on Indian roads does not really follow lanes. Two-wheelers are the dominant vehicle on the road and move unpredictably. Pedestrians, cyclists, auto-rickshaws, cattle, and construction debris all share the same stretch of road with no real separation. The data confirms the scale of this complexity: two-wheelers accounted for 48.3% of all road fatalities in India in 2024, and pedestrians for a further 14.7%, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.² A system that struggles to anticipate these road users simply is not ready for Indian conditions, no matter how well it performs elsewhere.

This is where standard global test scenarios fall short. A typical global test scenario might show a pedestrian crossing at a marked crossing, in good light, with a clean background. What an Indian validation engineer actually has to prepare for looks nothing like that: a child running out from between parked vehicles, a group of workers crossing a highway at dusk, a wedding procession spilling onto the road. In India, these are not rare edge cases, they happen every day.

Add the mix of weather, from monsoon downpours to blinding summer glare, and it becomes clear that no off-the-shelf dataset can capture what Indian roads actually look like. The only real way to build ADAS systems that work here is to keep collecting and learning from actual Indian driving, continuously.

The Quiet Layer Behind Every ADAS Decision

Most conversations about ADAS focus on sensors and processing power. The less glamorous part, the systems that capture and hold on to all that data, gets far less attention, even though it matters just as much.

A modern vehicle generates a huge amount of data every second, but most of it doesn't need to be retained. What matters is capturing the right moments: sudden braking, near-misses, situations where the system got confused. These are the moments that actually teach the system something. If they are lost before they can be reviewed, that opportunity to improve is gone too.

Why Storage Deserves More Attention

If data is what makes ADAS smarter, then reliable storage is what makes sure that data survives long enough to be useful. It is one of the least discussed parts of the whole system.

Inside a vehicle, conditions are tough: heat, constant vibration, and the need to record critical moments without missing a beat. This calls for storage built specifically for automotive use, not the kind found in everyday consumer devices.

There is also the challenge of getting all this data off the vehicle and into a system where engineers can actually use it. With fleets generating this much data, how quickly and reliably that transfer happens becomes a real engineering concern, not a minor detail.

Of course, storage alone doesn't make a car safer. But what is does, is that it makes sure that when something goes wrong, the moment is reliaby captured, saved, and available for engineers to learn from. That is a distinction worth remembering.

Bringing It Back to the Road

Once the data is off the vehicle, it needs a place where engineers can look back at specific driving moments, rebuild them, and test whether a fix actually works. For India, that library of moments needs to be built from Indian roads and Indian traffic. Otherwise, the testing happening in the background stays disconnected from what actually happens on the ground, and that gap eventually shows up on the road.

The road ahead for ADAS in India will not be decided only by sensors or software. It will be decided by how well the industry builds the quieter systems that connect what happens on the road to what gets fixed in the model, and that is where the real work still lies.

Prasad Sandireddy is the Vice President of Product Development Engineering at SanDisk. All views expressed are the author's own.

Can India Build a Resilient EV Supply Chain Without Closing the Materials Loop?

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 20:50:39

With the rapid growth of EV in India and the government giving incentives to people who are buying vehicles, the critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, aluminium and rare earth elements like neodymium, praseodymium, and other 17 elements became equally essential to increase battery production. The high reliance on importing these materials leaves the sector exposed to geopolitical risks and fluctuating commodity prices.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), we will need a lot of minerals like lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earth elements in the coming years. This is because many countries are making electric vehicles using renewable energy and storing energy in batteries. People often talk about batteries. Rare earth elements like neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium are also very important. They help make the magnets that power electric motors and make them go further. China accounts for around 90% of global rare earth magnet production, while the automotive sector has the highest economic exposure to supply disruptions, with more than US$3 trillion worth of downstream manufacturing outside China potentially affected by shortages of rare earth magnets. The IEA also estimates that recycling and secondary supply could reduce primary rare earth mining requirements by up to 35% by 2050, highlighting that resource recovery will be as important as new mining in securing future clean energy supply chains.

However, the global supply chain for these materials remains heavily concentrated.

China dominates not only the processing of rare earth elements but also the manufacturing of permanent magnets, giving it an outsized influence over global clean energy supply chains. Recent export restrictions on certain rare earth materials have once again exposed how geopolitical developments can disrupt industries far beyond mining, affecting automotive production, manufacturing costs and investment decisions worldwide.

India's EV Ambitions Cannot Depend on Imported Materials Alone

For India, this is no longer just a sustainability discussion. It is becoming a question of industrial competitiveness, economic resilience and long-term resource security.

India has made significant progress in positioning itself as a global automotive manufacturing hub. The country is encouraging EV adoption through policy incentives, battery manufacturing programmes and localisation initiatives while attracting investments across the electric mobility value chain. The automotive industry already contributes around 6% to India's GDP and nearly 35% of manufacturing GDP, making its future competitiveness central to the country's broader economic ambitions.

The challenge extends beyond availability alone. Every disruption in the supply of lithium, cobalt or rare earth elements affects production schedules, increases manufacturing costs and creates uncertainty for investors planning long term capacity expansion. For manufacturers operating in an intensely price sensitive market such as India, these fluctuations directly influence vehicle affordability and consumer adoption.

A Linear Supply Chain Is Becoming India's Biggest Weakness

India's EV industry largely follows a traditional linear model—extract, manufacture, use and discard. While this approach has supported industrial growth for decades, it is increasingly unsuited to a future where critical minerals are becoming strategic assets rather than abundant commodities.

Every electric vehicle battery contains valuable materials that retain significant economic value even after the battery reaches the end of its automotive life. Similarly, electric motors contain rare earth magnets that can be recovered and reused. Without efficient collection systems and recycling infrastructure, these materials are discarded, forcing manufacturers to depend on fresh imports despite already having valuable resources available within the domestic economy.

This is where the principles of a circular economy become increasingly important.

Closing the Materials Loop Is the Real Opportunity

A circular supply chain keeps products and materials in use for as long as possible through reuse, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing and recycling. Rather than treating end-of-life batteries and components as waste, they become a valuable source of secondary raw materials that can enter manufacturing.

Battery recycling represents one of the most immediate opportunities. Modern recycling technologies can recover significant quantities of lithium, nickel, cobalt and other valuable metals from used batteries, reducing dependence on imported virgin materials while lowering the environmental footprint associated with mining.

The opportunity extends beyond batteries. Permanent magnets used in electric motors contain rare earth elements that are expensive, strategically important and increasingly difficult to secure. Recovering these materials through advanced recycling and urban mining can strengthen India's resource security while supporting domestic manufacturing.

Building the Ecosystem for Circular Mobility

However, material recovery cannot succeed without efficient reverse logistics. Policy will also play an equally important role.

India has already introduced Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) provisions for batteries, but implementation will require continued strengthening through better collection mechanisms, improved traceability and stronger collaboration across the value chain. Digital tracking systems can improve transparency by monitoring critical materials from production through recycling, helping manufacturers recover valuable resources while assuring compliance with environmental standards.

Investment in domestic refining and recycling infrastructure should receive the same strategic attention as battery manufacturing. While gigafactories remain essential, the ability to recover and process materials domestically will determine how resilient India's EV ecosystem becomes over the coming decades.

Circularity should also begin at the design stage. Vehicles and batteries designed for easier disassembly, repair and material recovery reduce recycling costs while improving resource efficiency. Design choices made today will determine how effectively valuable materials can be recovered years from now.

A Competitiveness Strategy for India's EV Future

India's EV transition is often measured through vehicle sales, charging infrastructure and battery manufacturing capacity. While these remain important indicators, they capture only part of the story. The real test of long term success will be whether the country can secure the materials required to sustain this transition without remaining permanently dependent on volatile global supply chains.

India has an opportunity to build an EV ecosystem that is not only cleaner but also smarter and more self reliant. Achieving that vision will require looking beyond vehicle production to the full lifecycle of the materials that power them. In the future of electric mobility, competitive advantage will belong not only to those who manufacture the most vehicles, but to those who recover, reuse and retain the resources that make those vehicles possible.

Bharath Krishna Rao is the CEO & Co-Founder at Emobi. All views expressed are the author's own.

As EV & CNG Vehicles Stay Longer on Roads, India’s Fleet Servicing Ecosystem Must Evolve

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 20:44:14

India’s commercial mobility landscape is entering a phase where the conversation is shifting from simply adopting cleaner vehicles to sustaining their value over a longer operating life. Electric and CNG vehicles are becoming an increasingly relevant part of commercial fleets, while policy measures are creating greater scope for these vehicles to remain in operation for longer.

The reported proposal to allow a 20-year permit period for commercial EVs and CNG vehicles could be an important lever in this transition. By improving vehicle-level economics and giving fleet operators a longer operating horizon, it could strengthen the case for alternative-fuel commercial mobility. But the success of such a move will depend on more than the economics of purchasing a vehicle. It will also depend on how effectively the ecosystem can support that vehicle throughout its extended lifecycle.

The Shift From Acquisition to Lifecycle Value

For commercial fleets, the value of a vehicle is closely linked to how reliably and economically it performs over time. A longer permit period therefore changes the equation for fleet operators. It places greater importance on maintenance, serviceability and the ability to manage vehicles effectively as they move through different stages of their operating life.

This means the supporting ecosystem will need to evolve alongside the vehicles themselves. Continued innovation across vehicle technology, component lifecycle and cost-effective maintenance solutions will be important to ensure that EV and CNG vehicles remain economically viable as they age.

The industry will also need to build stronger capabilities around older-generation vehicles. The availability of skilled technicians and specialised servicing capabilities will become increasingly important as more alternative-fuel vehicles enter the fleet and remain operational for longer periods. Ensuring that these capabilities are available across the vehicle lifecycle will help fleet operators maintain greater cost predictability and vehicle utilisation.

At the same time, ensuring spare parts availability for older models across the country could become a more complex requirement as vehicle technology continues to evolve and model cycles become shorter. With new technologies and updated models entering the market more frequently, maintaining adequate access to compatible spare parts and service expertise for vehicles that have been on the road for many years will require greater coordination across manufacturers, suppliers and the wider service ecosystem. Addressing this proactively will be important to ensure that longer operating lives remain practical for fleet operators.

Uptime Becomes a Bigger Part of the Equation

For a commercial fleet, however, lifecycle economics cannot be separated from uptime. A vehicle that is unavailable for service is not generating value, regardless of its initial purchase economics.

As vehicles remain on the road for longer, preventive maintenance, timely servicing and dependable roadside assistance will therefore become increasingly important. The ability to respond quickly when a vehicle encounters an issue, minimise downtime and get it back into operation efficiently will be central to maintaining fleet productivity.

Technology can play an important role in this evolution. Connected systems, data-led maintenance and integrated service networks can enable better planning, faster response and more proactive management of vehicle health and service requirements. Over time, this can help move fleet servicing from a largely reactive function towards a more structured lifecycle-management approach.

Building the Ecosystem for the Next Phase of Commercial Mobility

The potential 20-year permit framework can therefore be viewed as more than a regulatory change. It could serve as a catalyst for the broader commercial mobility ecosystem to mature around the longer operating lives of EV and CNG vehicles.

The focus will increasingly need to move beyond vehicle sales and financing towards the complete ownership and operating journey, encompassing maintenance, servicing, spare-parts availability, skilled manpower, technology and roadside support.

As India advances towards cleaner commercial mobility, ensuring that these vehicles remain reliable and economical throughout their extended lifecycle will be just as important as encouraging their adoption in the first place. The opportunity for the industry is to build the capabilities and infrastructure today that can support this transition over the next decade and beyond.

A longer permit period can create significant value for India’s commercial mobility ecosystem. But its larger potential lies in what it can enable: cleaner vehicles operating efficiently for longer, supported by an ecosystem that is equipped to manage their lifecycle, protect uptime and deliver sustainable value over time.

Vimal Singh is the Founder & CEO at ReadyAssist. All views expressed are the author's own.

Why the New Age GCC Contracts and E-buses Require a Fresh New Look Than the Traditional Way Buses Were Operated

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 12:08:35

There are two very distinct differences in the new-age E buses, viz the cost of the bus and the fuel i.e. electricity. The high cost of the bus makes it necessary for it to be used optimally. Underutilisation of the bus would obviously impact the recovery of its cost. At the same time, overutilisation would impact its battery life and performance. Right battery capacity for its single-charge run shall ensure the long life of the battery. We are well aware that E buses require opportunity charging. A higher-capacity battery though, would ensure a longer single-charge run; it would increase the cost and the weight of the bus.

There are many factors that decide the optimum utilisation of the bus. Hence, it is very important to decide, design the operational network and schedule it properly so that the bus can deliver to its fullest. In the early days when we started operating E buses, we did not realise the impact of getting the bus back to the depot for opportunity charging. If improperly done, this would not only affect the kms operated but would also reduce the number of buses on line when they are brought to the depots. Hence, the schedules have to be redone considering the fact that these are not diesel/CNG buses.

Getting acquainted with a new technology takes time. We have, for all these years, operated diesel buses in which the need to design the operation vis-a-vis the fuel was not very high. However, in the instant case, fuel is a very important factor that would decide the network design. This coupled with the non-peak passenger demand, would help in designing the right network. This is something that the E-bus planners and operators should well understand.

Another factor deciding the operation of these buses is the power rates during the peak and the non-peak periods. Since the rates are not uniform throughout the day, it would be ideal to plan charging during the period when the rate is discounted or at par. Though it would not be possible to meet all conditions to the fullest, the successful operation would be the one that would tick all boxes optimally.

Operators are surely adapting to E buses. One should not forget that our expertise and experience in operating diesel buses has been gained over several decades. Our control over the operation of E buses would be much faster, considering the induction of newer technology and the efficient flow of knowledge and expertise. Our drivers would enjoy driving an E bus, considering that almost all the buses would be air-conditioned with automatic transmission. This would reduce driving fatigue considerably. One should also not forget that maintaining an E bus is much more economical than maintaining a diesel bus, as the moving parts are much less.

We are all learning and adapting to these new buses and the fuel. The bus scores on all the points, viz. Driving, travelling, maintaining and viability. Hence, its adaptability and acceptance would be fast.

Victor Nagaonkar is the President at Urban Glide. All views expressed are the author's own.

Why India's EV Chargers Are Underused - And What Fixes It

Autocar Professional Bureau — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 21:01:08

India's public EV charging network has expanded rapidly. That is good news. The more difficult question now is whether those chargers are being used enough.

As we mark World EV Day, here are a few thoughts from my own experience in the Indian EV charging ecosystem, and from charging markets around the world.

Low utilisation is one of the biggest challenges the industry faces. There are several reasons for it. But one factor stands above the rest.

Location is the Single Biggest Factor

A charger cannot be installed simply because land is available, a host is willing to provide space, or an electricity connection happens to be nearby. A charging station is a longterm infrastructure commitment. Once deployed, it is not easy to move.

The network planner has to look deeper. Is the site on the natural traffic flow? Is entry and exit easy? Is it visible and safe? Can a driver comfortably spend 20 or 30 minutes there? Is there a clean washroom, a place for tea or a meal, somewhere reasonably comfortable to sit?

For a petrol pump, these are add-ons. For charging, they are the product. If a customer is going to spend half an hour at a site, the experience around the charger becomes part of what he is paying for.

A good charging location is not merely a place where a charger can be installed. It is a place where the driver naturally wants to stop.

I have seen this play out in a way that makes the point better than any argument can. A well-known auto OEM installed an excellent charging station just outside Mumbai on the Mumbai–Ahmedabad highway. Good equipment, good build quality, a strong brand behind it. It has struggled for users. The station did everything right except answer the one question that matters most: why would a driver stop here?

Don't Put the Charger Where the Journey Starts or Ends

This is the behavioural piece. Operators are naturally drawn to sites close to major cities because traffic density is high. But high traffic does not mean high charging demand.

Consider a charger 20 or 30 kilometres after someone leaves Mumbai. Most private EV owners with home charging will start the journey with a full or nearly full battery. They have little reason to stop that early. The same logic applies at the other end - if the destination is close, drivers push through rather than stop for 20 minutes.

This is very likely a part of what happened on the Mumbai–Ahmedabad stretch. A driver leaving Mumbai with a full battery has no reason to charge 30 km in. The site may be excellent. The point in the journey is wrong.

The productive location usually sits in the natural middle of the journey, where meaningful battery depletion coincides with the driver's own need for a break. That is where vehicle behaviour and human behaviour intersect.

From Coverage to Consumption

In the first phase of the market, we built for coverage rather than consumption - understandably so. India needed chargers - dots on the map, and customers needed confidence that inter-city EV travel was possible.

But in some cases, we answered, "where can we put a charger" before asking "how much energy will actually be consumed here." Those are very different questions. A charger can look excellent on a network map and still be commercially weak, with impressive traffic counts but little relevant EV traffic passing through.

The next phase has to move from coverage to consumption. Network density matters. Energy throughput matters more.

Charger Size Should Match the Site, Not the Ambition

A 60-kW charger and a 180-kW charger can both report 5 percent utilisation, but the energy dispensed is very different - roughly 72 kWh a day against 216 kWh at the same theoretical utilisation. Utilisation percentage alone tells only part of the story.

More importantly, oversizing weakens the business case. A 180 kW or 240 kW charger makes sense only where vehicle mix, traffic, and dwell time justify it. If most cars can accept only a fraction of that power, the operator is paying for capacity nobody uses. The aim isn't to install the biggest charger - it’s to install the right charger for the right location.

ENGINEER THE UTILISATION, DON'T WAIT FOR IT

Engineer the Utilisation, Don't Wait for It

Utilisation cannot always be left to chance. Operators should actively build a base load - taxi fleets, bus operators, logistics companies, employee transport - by selling charging capacity in bulk rather than waiting entirely for retail traffic.

The contrast with the OEM example above played out almost in parallel, on the Nashik highway. A CPO tied up with taxi operators there and offered a discounted rate for electrons purchased in bulk. Utilisation is no longer a concern at that site. Same broad geography, same basic proposition - highway charging near a metro - but one operator waited for traffic to arrive, and the other went and signed it up in advance.

The fleet gets preferential pricing for committing volume. The operator gets predictable, contracted consumption instead of hoping retail traffic shows up. That changes site economics on day one.

So, the question isn't only "where can I install a charger." It's also "who can I get to commit to using it." Especially in the early years, utilisation has to be engineered, not assumed.

Uptime is a Commercial Metric, Not an Operations One

Even an excellent location cannot compensate for an unreliable charger. EV users quickly learn which chargers are dependable and increasingly plan journeys around the ones they trust. A charger doesn't have to fail every time to lose customers - it only has to fail often enough for drivers to stop trusting it.

A charger that works reliably becomes part of an EV driver's mental route map. One that works only when you're lucky eventually disappears from it. Reliability doesn't just protect utilisation - it creates it.

The Next Battle is Productivity

India will need many more chargers as EV penetration grows. Low utilisation today is not an argument against expansion. But the nature of expansion has to change.

The first phase was about putting chargers on the map. The next has to be about making those chargers productive - better locations, better sizing, better uptime, fleet anchoring where possible, and far more discipline before capex is committed.

The charger can be upgraded later. The tariff can be revised. But a bad location remains a bad location - and in this business, that one decision can determine utilisation for years. Two highways an hour apart just proved it both ways.

Sandeep Bangia is a senior professional in the corporate sector. All views expressed are the author's own.

The Missing Pillar in Corporate ESG Reporting: Employee Mobility

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:55:48

Before the office lights switch on every morning, millions of employees are already on the move. They are inching through traffic, switching between buses and cabs, driving long distances, or waiting for transport that may or may not arrive on time. By the time they reach work, fuel has been consumed, carbon has been emitted, and countless productive hours have been lost.

Ironically, this entire journey remains largely absent from the corporate sustainability conversation.

Today, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting has developed into a boardroom priority. Firms methodically trace energy expenditure, renewable energy implementation, water preservation, waste management, and supply chain releases. These system of measurements have become cardinal to sustainability disclosures, and net-zero commitments and shareholder expectations.

However, one substantial contributor to a company's ecological footprint often slips under the radar, the daily commute of its employees.

As India's cities develop and Global Capability Centres (GCCs) continue to drive economic growth, millions commute to work daily. While corporations have made notable advancement in building greener offices, the environmental impact generated before the employees even enter the workplace often goes unmeasured.

It's time to ask a simple but important question: Can an ESG strategy truly be complete if it overlooks how employees get to work?

The Invisible Carbon Footprint

Most organizations today have a clear understanding of their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Increasingly, they are also paying closer attention to Scope 3 emissions across their value chain. Yet employee commuting, despite being a recognised Scope 3 category under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, remains one of the least measured and least optimized sources of emissions.

The challenge is understandable. Unlike electricity consumption or fuel usage within company premises, employee commuting is fragmented. People travel different distances, use different modes of transport, work varying shifts, and start from multiple locations. Capturing this data has traditionally been difficult. But complexity should not become an excuse for omission.

As corporations align themselves with science-based climate targets and net-zero goals, each avoidable tonne of carbon matters. Ignoring employee mobility means disregarding one of the largest prospects to reduce emissions while improving operational efficacy.

It's Time to Think Beyond Transportation

For years, employee transport has been perceived as an administrative requirement, a service that simply moves people from home to office. That perspective needs to evolve.

Improvements in technology have transformed mobility into a smart ecosystem. Route optimization, dynamic scheduling, shared transport, real-time visibility, and better vehicle utilization can significantly decrease excessive automobile kilometres, enhance occupancy, and lower emissions.

Every empty seat on a corporate shuttle represents wasted capacity. Every inefficient route burn fuel that didn't need to be consumed. Every employee who shifts from driving alone to shared mobility contributes to a smaller carbon footprint.

Viewed differently, mobility is no longer just an operational function, it is a strategic sustainability opportunity.

Mobility Sits at the Heart of ESG

Employee mobility is often discussed only in the context of transport logistics. In reality, it touches every pillar of ESG. If we look from a green perspective, optimized and shared transport decreases fuel consumption, congestion, and greenhouse gas emissions.

From a social point of view, safe and reliable transportation improves employee wellbeing, lowers regular stress, improves accessibility, and builds a more inclusive workplace, particularly for women travelling during early morning or late-night shifts.

From a governance point of view, digital mobility platforms enhance transparency, compliance, accountability, and data-driven decision-making whilst allowing companies to monitor and optimize their transport footprint. Few corporate initiatives create measurable impact across all three dimensions of ESG as effectively as employee mobility.

Measuring What Matters

One principle has consistently shaped successful sustainability programmes: What gets measured gets managed. Companies consistently monitor water usage, electricity consumption and waste diversion because data enables meaningful action. Employee mobility deserves the same level of attention.

Business leaders should begin asking questions such as:

What is the annual carbon footprint generated by employee commuting?

How many employees use shared transportation compared to individual vehicles?

How much carbon can be avoided through route optimization and higher vehicle occupancy?

Should employee commute emissions become a standard metric in annual ESG disclosures?

Without measurement, employee mobility remains invisible. With data, it becomes one of the most practical and measurable levers for reducing emissions.

A Defining Opportunity for India's Growing Workplace Economy

India's workplace backdrop is changing fast. The growth of GCCs, new business districts, and large corporate campuses has profoundly remodelled how employees commute. Longer travels, increasing congestion, and growing pressure on urban infrastructure are becoming common realities.

This change offers a prospect, not just to amend transport, but to redesign workplace mobility itself.

As an alternative of treating transport as an employee benefit or an operational expense, organisations should start looking at mobility as serious workplace infrastructure, one that directly impacts sustainability, productivity, talent retention, employee experience, and business resilience.

Forward-looking organizations are already recognizing that the commute is no longer separate from the workplace. It is, in many ways, the first and last employee experience of every working day.

From Reporting to Responsibility

The future of ESG will not be defined by the number of metrics organizations disclose, but by whether they are measuring the metrics that truly matter. Employee mobility deserves a perpetual position in corporate sustainability policies for it connects environmental responsibility with operational efficacy, employee welfare, and business performance.

The companies that commence determining, optimizing, and reporting commute-related emissions from today will be competent for tomorrow's regulatory prospects, stakeholder demands, and climate commitments.

Corporate sustainability does not arise when employees swipe their access cards or log into their laptops. It begins the moment they step out of their homes.

And perhaps that's where the next chapter of ESG needs to begin as well.

Ankur Krishna is Head, COCO Rides. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Software is the New Engine: How Cars Are Becoming Tech Platforms

Arunima Pal — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:43:10

There was a time when the value of an automobile was almost entirely locked in its physical form: the displacement of its engine, the stiffness of its chassis, the efficiency of its drivetrain. That calculus is changing rapidly, and not just because technology has advanced. Evolving customer expectations have been a decisive force in shifting the industry's centre of gravity from hardware to software. Once buyers experienced the convenience of a connected smartphone - always updated, always personalised, always learning - they began asking the same of their cars. That demand has fundamentally accelerated the automotive industry's transition into a software-driven era.

The numbers reflect this shift clearly. The Indian connected car market is projected to grow at 16.7% CAGR by 2030. What was once a premium luxury feature - in-car apps, ADAS, remote connected services - is now a mainstream expectation even in compact SUVs and premium hatchbacks.

The Competition Has Moved

Automotive rivalry was built for generations on horsepower, torque, and fuel efficiency. Those engineering fundamentals remain important, but they no longer define differentiation on their own. Today, a buyer evaluates the quality of the infotainment interface, the responsiveness of driver-assistance systems, and the depth of the connected services ecosystem with the same scrutiny as the engine spec sheet.

Automakers are responding by building proprietary operating systems, app ecosystems, and digital user interfaces, turning the vehicle into a platform capable of hosting navigation, commerce, entertainment, and mobility services throughout its life. Remote lock/unlock, real-time vehicle tracking, app-based climate control, and natural-language voice assistants are no longer segment-topping extras; they are becoming standard expectations. For manufacturers, this software-led approach creates a meaningful path away from price-driven competition, enabling customer stickiness through digital experiences and subscription-based feature ecosystems that evolve with the owner.

The Car That Improves After Purchase

Over-the-air (OTA) software updates stand as one of the most consequential shifts in how the automotive industry relates to its customers. For the first time, the vehicle at the point of sale is not the finished product; it is the starting point. Bug fixes, performance refinements, map updates, new safety features, and even enhanced powertrain calibrations can now be delivered without a workshop visit.

The share of vehicles globally and in India equipped with OTA capability is rising steadily. This creates new commercial possibilities too: "features on demand", tiered service packs, and software unlocks allow customers to expand a vehicle's capabilities as their needs change over time. The product, in effect, has a living lifecycle rather than a fixed one.

From Moving to Learning

Connected vehicles generate a continuous stream of data, such as vehicle health telemetry, driving behaviour, energy consumption, and location patterns, creating a feedback loop that was simply not available to automakers even a decade ago. With 4G/5G networks and embedded eSIMs now becoming standard in higher trims, cars can run AI-driven features such as adaptive navigation, driver monitoring, and predictive maintenance that genuinely improve with usage.

For EVs specifically, this data layer is particularly powerful, since it enables smarter energy management, battery health monitoring, and usage-based insights that directly improve ownership satisfaction. At the same time, the industry must address the responsibilities this brings: data privacy, user consent frameworks, and cybersecurity infrastructure are not optional considerations; they are key to the promise of a software-defined vehicle.

Indian Consumer Readiness and Implications for OEMs

Perhaps the most important signal for the industry is how quickly Indian consumers have embraced this transition. According to Ken Research, India's connected vehicle market is projected to scale from approximately USD 475 million in 2025 to USD 1.36 billion by 2031, growing at a 19.2% CAGR. A study published by Deloitte in Feb 2026 shows that more than half of Indian car buyers, particularly in metro markets, now rank in-car technology and connectivity among their primary purchase criteria, not as a bonus over mechanical attributes. Hundreds of thousands of connected vehicles are already active on Indian roads, with telematics and app-based engagement data clearly showcasing that these features are being used, not just bought.

Winning in this era will require automakers to think and operate increasingly like technology companies: building resilient, scalable platforms; iterating on features in rapid release cycles; and treating user experience design with the same rigour as structural engineering. Deep collaboration with cloud providers, semiconductor manufacturers, and telecom operators will be essential to delivering the reliable, low-latency connected experiences that customers now expect as a baseline.

The vehicle of the future will be defined not just by how well it drives, but by how intelligently it adapts, how consistently it improves, and how seamlessly it integrates into a customer's digital life. Software, in the truest sense, has become the new horsepower.

Anand Kulkarni is Chief Products Officer, HV Engineering, TMPV & TPEM. Views expressed are the author's personal.

The Second Life of EV Batteries: Why Recycling Will Define India’s Clean Mobility Future

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:34:04

India’s EV momentum is visible across the board. Adoption is rising, infrastructure is expanding, and policy support is strengthening. But the long-term success of this transition will not be decided only by how many vehicles are deployed. It will depend on how we manage what comes after.

Every EV battery follows a lifecycle. It begins in a vehicle, transitions into a second-life application, and eventually reaches end-of-life. The countries that manage this lifecycle efficiently will not just scale EV adoption but also build durable energy systems.

What comes after use will shape the transition

An EV battery does not become useless once it is no longer fit for mobility. When its performance drops below automotive requirements, it can still support less demanding applications such as stationary storage or backup power. In a country like India, where renewable energy adoption is increasing while grid stability remains a concern, this creates immediate value.

Second-life use extends battery utility, reduces early disposal, and improves overall system economics. But it is not a permanent solution as it delays end-of-life but does not eliminate it.

Eventually, every battery reaches a stage where it must be processed. At that point, the decision is straightforward. It can either be treated as waste or as a source of recoverable materials. Given the direction of global supply chains, the second approach is no longer optional.

The EV transition is, at its core, a materials transition. Batteries rely on lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, manganese, copper, and aluminium. These inputs are not only finite but also unevenly distributed. More importantly, refining and processing capacities remain concentrated in a limited number of regions.

According to the International Energy Agency, demand for key battery minerals could triple by 2030 and quadruple by 2040, driven by EVs and energy storage. At the same time, supply chains are still catching up. This gap introduces a different kind of risk.

It is not simply about availability. It is about consistency.

Geopolitical tensions, export restrictions, and logistics disruptions can interrupt supply even when resources exist. For manufacturers, this creates uncertainty that is harder to manage than price volatility. Production depends on reliable inputs, not just accessible ones.

This is where recycling begins to move from a sustainability discussion to a supply-side solution.

Recycling is now a core part of the supply chain

For years, recycling has been treated as an end-of-life activity. That framing is no longer sufficient. It now sits within the supply chain itself.

Mining capacity takes years to develop. It involves exploration, approvals, infrastructure, and capital investment. Recycling, in comparison, can be scaled faster because the material is already above ground. Used batteries and electronics contain concentrated forms of the same metals that are otherwise mined at significant cost.

This makes recycling one of the most practical ways to build a domestic material base and India has already begun to recognise this shift.

The Battery Waste Management Rules, 2022 introduced Extended Producer Responsibility, placing accountability on producers to ensure collection and recycling. This creates a formal system where materials are channelled back into the ecosystem instead of being lost.

There is also a broader policy focus on critical minerals, where recovery from end-of-life products is being treated as part of long-term resource planning. Incentives for recycling capacity and processing infrastructure are starting to support this direction.

However, policy intent alone is not enough. The effectiveness of recycling will depend on how well the system is built and executed.

At scale, recycling is not just about dismantling batteries. It is a technical process that requires precision at multiple stages.

It begins with safe handling. Lithium-ion batteries are energy-dense and require controlled discharge and transportation. This is followed by dismantling and pre-processing, where materials are separated into intermediate forms.

The most critical stage is refining. Extracting metals to a level of purity that allows them to re-enter battery manufacturing is complex. Without this step, recycling cannot replace primary supply.

The focus has to shift from volume-based recycling to quality-driven recovery. Materials recovered must meet manufacturing-grade specifications. Anything below that creates limited value and restricts reuse.

Collection systems must be structured and scalable. If end-of-life batteries do not enter formal channels, recovery efficiency drops and safety risks increase. Informal handling leads to both material loss and environmental concerns.

Traceability is equally important. As volumes grow, tracking material flows from collection to processing becomes essential for compliance and accountability. Without this, the system remains fragmented.

Safety must be built into every stage. From storage to logistics to processing, lithium-ion batteries require controlled environments. This is not an operational detail, it is a design requirement.

Standardisation is another gap. Not all batteries follow the same path. Some can be repurposed for second-life use, others move directly to recycling. Clear frameworks are needed to assess, classify, and process them appropriately.

Finally, output quality determines success. Circularity is only meaningful if recovered materials can replace newly mined inputs. That is the benchmark.

The next phase of India’s journey will be shaped by deeper structural questions.

Can supply chains remain stable as demand rises?
Can end-of-life batteries be managed safely and efficiently?
Can material dependence be reduced through domestic recovery?

The answers will determine how sustainable this transition really is. Every battery will eventually reach the end of its usable life. What matters is what happens next.

Because the real value of a battery is not limited to its first use, but in how effectively its materials are brought back into the system.

Rohan Gupta is Co-founder and COO, Attero. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Winning the Future of Mobility

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 19:40:19

The global automotive industry has spent the better part of a decade debating the future of electric vehicles. Governments announced incentives, automakers unveiled ambitious roadmaps, and billions of dollars flowed into electrification. Yet somewhere along the way, many misunderstood the nature of the race itself.

The winners were never going to be the companies that simply built the best electric cars. They would be the ones that built the ecosystems capable of producing better vehicles, faster, cheaper, and continuously.

That distinction explains why China today occupies a position in mobility that few would have imagined just two decades ago.

In 2008, China was known for manufacturing at scale, not for innovation. It had no globally competitive passenger vehicle brands, while much of the world still viewed Chinese automobiles as low-cost alternatives rather than technological leaders. At the same time, however, the country was quietly building something far more consequential than individual products. It was aligning industrial policy, battery research, semiconductor capability, charging infrastructure, supplier development, software talent, and manufacturing capacity into one coordinated strategy.

Today, the results are impossible to ignore.

China accounts for roughly three-quarters of global EV manufacturing, produces nearly 69% of the world's EV batteries, and sells approximately 16.5 million electric vehicles in 2025, nearly 80% of all EVs sold globally that year. According to the International Energy Agency, nearly 55% of new passenger vehicles sold in China in 2025 were new energy vehicles (NEVs), a milestone driven increasingly by consumer demand rather than government subsidies. The market has crossed an important threshold, from being policy-led to becoming market-led.

This is perhaps the most important lesson for every country seeking to build the industries of the future. Sustainable industrial leadership begins when consumers choose a technology because it is simply the better option, not because policy compels them to.

Yet even these impressive numbers tell only part of the story. The real competitive advantage China has built is not cost.

It is speed.

The New Currency of Competition Is Time

Historically, global automotive companies measured success by engineering excellence, manufacturing quality, and brand strength. Product development cycles of three to five years were considered normal, allowing manufacturers to perfect every aspect of a vehicle before launch.

That model is rapidly becoming obsolete. Chinese manufacturers have rewritten the rules by compressing innovation cycles dramatically. New models are routinely conceived, engineered, validated, and launched in approximately 18 months, less than one-third the time traditionally required by many global OEMs.

This acceleration is not simply about moving faster. It fundamentally changes the economics of innovation.

Shorter development cycles mean customer feedback is incorporated almost in real time. Software updates happen continuously. Battery technologies improve between model generations instead of every decade. Manufacturing processes evolve alongside product development rather than after it. The vehicle is becoming a “tablet on wheels”, continuously updated, increasingly software-defined, and capable of evolving long after purchase.

The scale of this transformation is evident in global product launches. Between November 2024 and October 2025, Chinese manufacturers introduced 91 of the 180 new vehicle models tracked globally, representing a significant share of new model introductions during the period.

Innovation itself has become industrialised.

The implications extend well beyond automobiles. Every product generation improves the next, creating an innovation flywheel that becomes increasingly difficult for slower competitors to match.

This is why many discussions around China's cost advantage miss the larger point.

Lower costs are an outcome. Speed is the strategy.

BYD Explains the Entire Story

If one company captures China's transformation better than any policy or market statistic, it is BYD.

Today, BYD is recognised as the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer, selling over 2.26 million battery electric vehicles in 2025, ahead of Tesla's 1.64 million. Its products are sold in more than 70 countries, and its exports continue to accelerate as the company expands into Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

But this success story did not begin with automobiles. BYD started life as a battery manufacturer.

That origin matters because it reflects the philosophy underpinning China's industrial strategy. Rather than assembling vehicles using globally sourced components, companies like BYD built expertise in the technologies that would eventually define the industry's future.

Over nearly two decades, the company expanded from batteries into electric buses, power electronics, semiconductors, battery chemistry, vehicle manufacturing, software integration, and increasingly autonomous driving technologies. Each new capability strengthened the next, creating a vertically integrated ecosystem rather than a collection of independent businesses.

This patient capability-building is easy to overlook because the world tends to notice only the final product.

The electric car receives the headlines.

The battery factories, supplier networks, software platforms, and engineering talent pipelines rarely do.

Yet these upstream investments explain why BYD can iterate products faster, reduce costs more aggressively, and respond to changing market conditions with remarkable speed.

The company's rise also illustrates an increasingly important truth about industrial competitiveness.

The companies shaping tomorrow's industries are not merely manufacturers.

They are ecosystem architects.

And that is precisely where much of the global conversation around electric mobility has remained incomplete.

The Battery Moat That Changed the Balance of Power

If speed explains how China accelerated, batteries explain why it has remained ahead.

For years, the automotive industry treated batteries as components. China treated them as strategic infrastructure.

Long before electric vehicles became mainstream, Chinese companies were investing aggressively across the entire battery value chain, from critical minerals and cell chemistry to manufacturing capacity, recycling, and next-generation research. Today, CATL and BYD together account for well over half of the global EV battery market, while China as a whole produces nearly 69% of the world's EV batteries.

That upstream dominance has created a competitive moat that extends far beyond domestic manufacturers.

Whether it is Global OEMs, a growing number of emerging EV companies, or almost every global automaker, they depend, directly or indirectly, on Chinese battery technology, manufacturing expertise, or supply chains. The world's transition to electric mobility is, in many ways, being powered by an ecosystem that China spent nearly two decades building.

This advantage cannot be replicated simply by announcing new battery plants or signing supply agreements.

Battery ecosystems require years of accumulated intellectual property, manufacturing know-how, supplier relationships, raw material security, and engineering talent. Like semiconductor fabrication, they reward patience far more than urgency.

The lesson extends beyond batteries.

Industries that appear to be driven by consumer products are often won much earlier—through ownership of the technologies and supply chains hidden beneath them.

Two Companies, Two Strategies, One Winning Ecosystem

China's rise is often described as though it were driven by a single playbook. In reality, its success has come from encouraging multiple models of innovation to flourish simultaneously.

BYD and NIO illustrate this diversity particularly well.

BYD represents one model of industrial leadership. Its strategy has been built around vertical integration, manufacturing scale, affordability, and relentless operational efficiency. The company designs and manufactures many of its own batteries, semiconductors, electric motors, and software systems, allowing it to shorten development cycles while reducing costs across the value chain.

Its objective has been straightforward: make electric mobility accessible to millions while continuously improving performance and profitability.

NIO pursued an entirely different path.

Rather than competing on volume, it positioned itself as a premium technology company. It pioneered Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS), allowing customers to separate battery ownership from vehicle ownership and replace depleted batteries through automated swap stations in a matter of minutes.

The innovation went beyond convenience.

Battery swapping fundamentally changed the economics of EV ownership by reducing upfront purchase costs, eliminating concerns around battery degradation, and enabling future technology upgrades without replacing the vehicle itself. It transformed the battery from a fixed asset into a continuously evolving service.

The Real Race Is Beyond EVs

As China steadily built industrial capability, much of the global automotive industry framed electrification primarily as a product transition.

Success became measured by the number of electric models launched, factory announcements, or headline investment commitments.

The assumption was that consumer demand would naturally follow.

Instead, many companies discovered that electric vehicles alone were insufficient.

Charging infrastructure remained uneven. Battery supply chains were constrained. Software capabilities lagged. Consumer financing evolved slowly. Digital ecosystems remained fragmented.

The product arrived before the supporting system.

The consequences have been expensive. By early 2026, major global automakers had collectively announced more than US$65 billion in EV-related write-downs, restructuring charges and programme cancellations. These developments reflected a combination of factors, including evolving policy priorities in key markets, changing consumer demand, intensifying competition and the reassessment of capital allocation strategies. More broadly, they underscored the complexity of navigating one of the largest industrial transformations in automotive history.

The impact is particularly visible inside China itself.

During the first half of 2026, several long-established international automotive brands continued to lose market share in China as domestic manufacturers gained ground. German passenger vehicle brands recorded particularly steep declines, while Japanese manufacturers also contracted. BYD maintained its position ahead of Volkswagen as China's leading passenger car brand, reflecting the growing strength of domestic automakers.

As Bill Russo, founder of Automobility and one of the most experienced observers of China's mobility sector, aptly observed, "the market's decisive divide is no longer simply between internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and new energy vehicles (NEVs), but between relevance and decline."

That statement captures the industry's transformation more accurately than any market share statistic.

The defining question is no longer whether manufacturers produce electric vehicles.

It is whether they remain relevant inside an industry increasingly shaped by software, batteries, artificial intelligence, digital services, and continuously evolving consumer expectations.

Companies that continue treating electrification as a technology shift risk missing the larger industrial transition unfolding around them.

China's Next Export Is Not Cars - It's an Entire Industrial Model

China's ambitions no longer stop at domestic leadership.

Having built the world's largest EV market, it is now exporting the ecosystem that enabled its success.

Vehicle exports have grown rapidly over the past few years, but the more significant development is what those exports increasingly contain. Alongside vehicles come batteries, charging technologies, manufacturing expertise, software platforms, supplier partnerships, financing models, and integrated mobility solutions.

In the first half of 2026, Chinese vehicle exports continued expanding at a remarkable pace, with new energy vehicles accounting for an increasingly large share of overseas shipments. This reflects a strategic evolution.

China is no longer exporting products.

It is exporting capability.

For emerging markets across Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, Chinese manufacturers are not simply selling electric vehicles. They are helping establish charging infrastructure, battery production, supplier ecosystems, and digital mobility platforms that deepen long-term industrial relationships.

This is precisely how industrial leadership becomes durable.

Countries rarely dominate industries because they manufacture the most products.

They lead because they become indispensable to the ecosystems through which those products are designed, built, financed, serviced, and continuously improved.

Software Is Becoming the Car

If batteries powered the first phase of the EV revolution, software will define the second.

The automobile is undergoing its most profound transformation since the introduction of the internal combustion engine. Increasingly, vehicles are becoming software-defined platforms where performance is determined not only by horsepower or mechanical engineering, but by computing power, connectivity, artificial intelligence, and the ability to continuously improve through software updates.

In this new paradigm, the competitive battlefield extends far beyond the factory floor.

The scale of this transition is evident in industries that historically had little to do with automobiles. Technology companies that once focused primarily on mobile communications are now playing a central role in the automotive value chain. Qualcomm, for instance, has built an automotive design-win pipeline exceeding US$65 billion, reflecting rising demand for connected, software-defined vehicles. Its Snapdragon® Digital Chassis™ platform integrates cockpit computing, connectivity, telematics, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), cloud services and over-the-air software updates into a unified architecture, illustrating how mobility is increasingly becoming a software- and AI-driven industry.

That evolution says something profound.

When one of the world's largest semiconductor companies begins treating automobiles as computing platforms rather than transportation products, it signals that the industry's centre of gravity has fundamentally shifted.

Cars are becoming intelligent devices.

The winners will increasingly be determined not only by who manufactures them, but by who owns the operating systems, the data, the AI models, the user experience, and the digital services layered on top of the hardware.

The automobile industry is beginning to resemble the smartphone industry—not in appearance, but in economics.

The hardware remains important. The software becomes indispensable.

The Race Has Already Moved On

There is another lesson emerging from China that deserves attention.

While much of the world continues debating electric vehicle adoption, China is already investing beyond the current generation of mobility technologies.

Companies are commercialising next-generation batteries, accelerating autonomous driving capabilities, experimenting with intelligent transport infrastructure, and even moving toward consumer-ready electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft—what many now describe as flying cars.

Whether every one of these technologies succeeds is almost beside the point.

The more important observation is that China's industrial system has already shifted its attention to the next frontier.

It is behaving like an ecosystem that assumes today's breakthrough will soon become tomorrow's baseline.

That mindset may be its greatest competitive advantage of all.

The New Automotive Playbook

The implications of this shift are becoming increasingly visible beyond China's domestic market. Chinese automakers are no longer simply exporting vehicles; they are exporting a different way of organising automotive development.

Geely offers an instructive example. Its rise has been built not only on product expansion, but on an ability to combine brands, technologies, platforms and partnerships into an increasingly global ecosystem. Its approach reflects a broader characteristic of China's automotive industry: the ability to move quickly, experiment across business models and use partnerships to accelerate access to markets, technologies and capabilities.

This is fundamentally different from the traditional automotive playbook, where global expansion often meant establishing large, carefully structured operations and taking years to build local scale. The emerging Chinese model is more modular. Capabilities can be combined, partnerships can be reconfigured, technologies can be shared across platforms and products can move from concept to market at extraordinary speed.

That matters because speed compounds.

A company that launches faster gets consumer feedback earlier. Earlier feedback improves the next product. A larger installed base generates more data. More data improves software and product development. Greater scale strengthens supplier relationships and lowers costs. Lower costs create room for more competitive products, which in turn generate more demand.

The cycle reinforces itself.

This is why China's automotive advantage should not be understood simply through the lens of lower manufacturing costs or aggressive EV pricing. Those are visible outcomes of a much deeper system.

The real competitive advantage is the ecosystem.

For decades, global automakers built extraordinary strengths around engineering, manufacturing quality, brands and distribution. Those advantages remain important. But the basis of competition is changing. In a software-defined, battery-powered and increasingly AI-enabled industry, the ability to continuously improve may matter as much as the ability to launch a technically superior vehicle.

The question, therefore, is no longer simply who can build the best electric vehicle.

It is who can build the system that produces the next better vehicle—faster than its competitors can respond.

China's automotive transformation offers perhaps the clearest demonstration of what that system looks like. Industrial policy created the foundations. Battery and semiconductor investments created technological depth. Supplier ecosystems created scale. Manufacturing created speed. Software created continuous improvement. And companies such as BYD, NIO and Geely turned those capabilities into different models of commercial success.

The result is more than an automotive advantage.

It is a new industrial playbook.

The next phase of competition will not be won by the company with the biggest factory, the largest R&D budget or even the most advanced individual technology. It will be won by the ecosystem capable of learning, adapting and improving fastest.

China did not become the world's EV leader simply by building better electric cars.

It built an industrial system in which better cars could keep emerging.

That is the real meaning of China speed, and it may prove to be the country's most consequential automotive export of all.

Nagesh Basavanhalli is Founder at Peak 15 Advisors. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Winning the Future of Mobility

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 19:40:19

That distinction explains why China today occupies a position in mobility that few would have imagined just two decades ago.

Today, the results are impossible to ignore.

Yet even these impressive numbers tell only part of the story. The real competitive advantage China has built is not cost.

It is speed.

The New Currency of Competition Is Time

This acceleration is not simply about moving faster. It fundamentally changes the economics of innovation.

Innovation itself has become industrialised.

The implications extend well beyond automobiles. Every product generation improves the next, creating an innovation flywheel that becomes increasingly difficult for slower competitors to match.

This is why many discussions around China's cost advantage miss the larger point.

Lower costs are an outcome. Speed is the strategy.

BYD Explains the Entire Story

If one company captures China's transformation better than any policy or market statistic, it is BYD.

But this success story did not begin with automobiles. BYD started life as a battery manufacturer.

This patient capability-building is easy to overlook because the world tends to notice only the final product.

The electric car receives the headlines.

The battery factories, supplier networks, software platforms, and engineering talent pipelines rarely do.

Yet these upstream investments explain why BYD can iterate products faster, reduce costs more aggressively, and respond to changing market conditions with remarkable speed.

The company's rise also illustrates an increasingly important truth about industrial competitiveness.

The companies shaping tomorrow's industries are not merely manufacturers.

They are ecosystem architects.

And that is precisely where much of the global conversation around electric mobility has remained incomplete.

The Battery Moat That Changed the Balance of Power

If speed explains how China accelerated, batteries explain why it has remained ahead.

For years, the automotive industry treated batteries as components. China treated them as strategic infrastructure.

That upstream dominance has created a competitive moat that extends far beyond domestic manufacturers.

This advantage cannot be replicated simply by announcing new battery plants or signing supply agreements.

The lesson extends beyond batteries.

Industries that appear to be driven by consumer products are often won much earlier—through ownership of the technologies and supply chains hidden beneath them.

Two Companies, Two Strategies, One Winning Ecosystem

China's rise is often described as though it were driven by a single playbook. In reality, its success has come from encouraging multiple models of innovation to flourish simultaneously.

BYD and NIO illustrate this diversity particularly well.

Its objective has been straightforward: make electric mobility accessible to millions while continuously improving performance and profitability.

NIO pursued an entirely different path.

The innovation went beyond convenience.

The Real Race Is Beyond EVs

As China steadily built industrial capability, much of the global automotive industry framed electrification primarily as a product transition.

Success became measured by the number of electric models launched, factory announcements, or headline investment commitments.

The assumption was that consumer demand would naturally follow.

Instead, many companies discovered that electric vehicles alone were insufficient.

Charging infrastructure remained uneven. Battery supply chains were constrained. Software capabilities lagged. Consumer financing evolved slowly. Digital ecosystems remained fragmented.

The product arrived before the supporting system.

The impact is particularly visible inside China itself.

That statement captures the industry's transformation more accurately than any market share statistic.

The defining question is no longer whether manufacturers produce electric vehicles.

It is whether they remain relevant inside an industry increasingly shaped by software, batteries, artificial intelligence, digital services, and continuously evolving consumer expectations.

Companies that continue treating electrification as a technology shift risk missing the larger industrial transition unfolding around them.

China's Next Export Is Not Cars - It's an Entire Industrial Model

China's ambitions no longer stop at domestic leadership.

Having built the world's largest EV market, it is now exporting the ecosystem that enabled its success.

China is no longer exporting products.

It is exporting capability.

This is precisely how industrial leadership becomes durable.

Countries rarely dominate industries because they manufacture the most products.

They lead because they become indispensable to the ecosystems through which those products are designed, built, financed, serviced, and continuously improved.

Software Is Becoming the Car

If batteries powered the first phase of the EV revolution, software will define the second.

In this new paradigm, the competitive battlefield extends far beyond the factory floor.

That evolution says something profound.

Cars are becoming intelligent devices.

The automobile industry is beginning to resemble the smartphone industry—not in appearance, but in economics.

The hardware remains important. The software becomes indispensable.

The Race Has Already Moved On

There is another lesson emerging from China that deserves attention.

While much of the world continues debating electric vehicle adoption, China is already investing beyond the current generation of mobility technologies.

Whether every one of these technologies succeeds is almost beside the point.

The more important observation is that China's industrial system has already shifted its attention to the next frontier.

It is behaving like an ecosystem that assumes today's breakthrough will soon become tomorrow's baseline.

That mindset may be its greatest competitive advantage of all.

The New Automotive Playbook

That matters because speed compounds.

The cycle reinforces itself.

This is why China's automotive advantage should not be understood simply through the lens of lower manufacturing costs or aggressive EV pricing. Those are visible outcomes of a much deeper system.

The real competitive advantage is the ecosystem.

The question, therefore, is no longer simply who can build the best electric vehicle.

It is who can build the system that produces the next better vehicle—faster than its competitors can respond.

The result is more than an automotive advantage.

It is a new industrial playbook.

China did not become the world's EV leader simply by building better electric cars.

It built an industrial system in which better cars could keep emerging.

That is the real meaning of China speed, and it may prove to be the country's most consequential automotive export of all.

Nagesh Basavanhalli is Founder at Peak 15 Advisors. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Managing Engineering Complexity in the Era of Intelligent Vehicles and Advanced Automotive Technologies

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 18:48:28

To an old-school automotive purist, driving is a conversation between driver and machine: the clutch pedal, the gear shift, the vibrations through the steering wheel, and the satisfying experience of the drive itself. To the busy, tech-savvy modern commuter, that experience is a chore someone finally automated: a vehicle that parks itself, predicts maintenance issues, and doubles up as a personalised digital cabin that updates and evolves.

Both camps have a point.

Love it or loathe it, we are in the era of intelligent vehicles, and it’s one of the most exciting yet disruptive engineering challenges in a century of automotive history.

Decoding the Tech vs Transformation Conundrum

A commercial aircraft runs on roughly 15 million lines of code and takes 7-10 years to design, test, and clear global safety audits. SDVs require over 100 million lines of code, yet market pressures demand that OEMs compress entire engineering lifecycles into just 2-3 years. Closing that gap demands a systems engineering mindset, one that leans on automation, virtualisation, and continuous validation to hold pace with market pressure.

Many treat the SDV shift as a software headcount problem: hire more developers, ship faster code releases, and layer more AI. That misses the point entirely. The reality is more nuanced, affecting organisational structures, operating models, supply chains, and how value is created long after the vehicle has been sold. This friction shows up in three areas.

People: Hardware engineers think in multi-year lifecycles focused on “right first time,” while software developers sprint in 2-week iterations, validating continuously and updating frequently. Compounding this cultural collision is a talent deficit, where the global demand for specialised automotive software engineers outstrips the supply.

Process: Legacy structures are unequipped for modern zonal architectures. The physical vehicle and its software stack must evolve independently. Buying advanced tools or AI models without rewriting the organisational operating model is a losing game.

Ecosystems: Building SDVs demands partners who understand the domain and digital infrastructure alike. It requires sharing data and co-developing the vehicle’s digital brain from day one. The multi-disciplinary expertise required now is simply too vast for any one manufacturer to absorb internally.

What Aircraft and Banks Figured Out First

Modern aircrafts rely on Integrated Modular Avionics, a zonal architecture that separates safety-critical systems from non-essential functions. For instance, if the in-flight entertainment crashes at 30,000 feet, the autopilot is unaffected. Automotive manufacturers are increasingly borrowing this philosophy as they transition to centralised electrical and electronic architectures.

Banking learned the hard way that every new digital touchpoint is a potential vulnerability, and the cost of breach is trust. It is the same story with intelligent vehicles. They contain dozens of wireless interfaces and as they begin handling payments for EV charging, smart parking and tolling, trust is as important as functionality, requiring BFSI-grade encryption and secure data pipelines. This level of cross-pollination is unlike anything seen in automotive history.

If AI Changes the Pace, Assurance Sets the Guardrails

Now, for the part that is genuinely exciting. AI is compressing SDV development timelines in ways that would have seemed implausible five years ago. General Motors, with physics-aware AI and advanced simulation, compressed vehicle timelines from 4-5 years to roughly 2; while Renault cut transmission development time by nearly 50% using AI to test design iterations virtually before building prototypes.

At Expleo, we developed AI-driven test engineering frameworks for leading ADAS providers that significantly improved test coverage, reducing validation effort and timelines by 60%. Tools that surface software and memory management issues much earlier in the lifecycle, reduce development times by up to 30%. We also built a portable cybersecurity assessment platform to help OEMs integrate cybersecurity by design.

The benefits are undeniable. However, AI models make highly sophisticated, best-guess predictions. But automotive engineering requires guaranteed outcomes for steering, braking, and powertrain. This is where AI assurance wraps probabilistic AI models in deterministic safety cages to ensure vehicles behave safely, predictably, and auditably under all operating conditions, throughout their lifecycle.

AI can accelerate testing, simulation, and decision-making, but accountability remains human. Engineers still need to validate outcomes, challenge assumptions, and determine whether a system is safe for the real world.

India’s Moment in the Driver’s Seat

You cannot talk about global automotive engineering without talking about India. With over 60 automotive GCCs and revenues projected to reach 9 billion by FY30, Indian engineers are writing the AUTOSAR code, training computer vision models, and building cloud architectures powering tomorrow’s global fleets. Domestically, cost-conscious consumers, unique infrastructure environments and training ADAS algorithms reliably across highly diverse road conditions means, adoption will follow a phased trajectory.

The future intelligent vehicles will be engineered like an aircraft, updated like a smartphone, protected like a banking platform, and powered by AI. Mechanical. Electrical. Software. AI. The boundaries between them are disappearing. Real-world problems do not arrive labelled that neatly anymore. Neither should engineering.

Unnikrishnan Anilkumar is COO at Expleo Solutions Limited. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Building the Talent Advantage for Automotive Transformation

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 18:31:37

The automotive industry is undergoing one of its most significant transformations in decades. From electrification and connected mobility to software-defined vehicles and AI-enabled manufacturing, organizations are investing heavily in the future of mobility. Yet the success of these investments will depend not only on innovation, but on the ability to deliver complex projects and programs successfully. In an environment defined by rapid change, the ability to consistently deliver successful projects and realize value from transformation investments has become a critical competitive advantage.

While technology is driving this transformation, success ultimately depends on an organization's ability to execute change effectively. Delivering next-generation mobility solutions requires more than innovation alone. It requires professionals who can align diverse stakeholders, navigate uncertainty, manage complexity, and translate strategic vision into measurable outcomes.

Technical Expertise Only a Part of the Equation

As automotive programs become increasingly complex, success depends as much on execution as it does on technical excellence. Delays in product launches, supply chain disruptions, regulatory requirements, and evolving customer expectations can significantly impact business outcomes. Professionals who can align stakeholders, manage risks, and maintain focus on value delivery play a critical role in ensuring projects deliver intended outcomes and business value.

These capabilities have become critical because modern automotive transformation is delivered through interconnected projects and programs rather than isolated functional efforts. Organizations that can successfully integrate technical expertise with strong execution capabilities are better positioned to accelerate innovation, improve project success rates, and deliver business value.

AI is Changing Work, not Replacing Talent

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of everyday automotive operations, from product design and predictive maintenance to quality assurance and intelligent manufacturing. While technology is automating routine tasks and accelerating decision-making, it is also reshaping workforce expectations.

Professionals creating the greatest value with AI are those who combine technological understanding with business context, project execution capability, and continuous learning. Long-term competitive advantage comes not from technology adoption alone, but from the ability to integrate emerging technologies into broader transformation initiatives successfully.

This reinforces an important reality for the automotive sector. While AI can accelerate execution and improve efficiency, delivering meaningful transformation still depends on people who can lead multidisciplinary teams, manage change effectively, navigate uncertainty, and convert technological possibilities into measurable business outcomes.

Upskilling Today to Build Tomorrow's Workforce

As automotive organizations accelerate investments in electric mobility, digital manufacturing, and intelligent supply chains, workforce development must evolve beyond traditional functional training.

Capabilities such as stakeholder engagement, communication, systems thinking, risk management, adaptive leadership, and strategic decision-making are becoming essential to successful project and program delivery. These skills enable professionals to collaborate across business functions, respond to evolving priorities, and maintain alignment between execution and organizational objectives.

They also help organizations improve delivery performance, respond to disruption more effectively, and increase the likelihood of achieving strategic goals. Organizations that will lead the next phase of industry transformation are unlikely to be those with only the most advanced technologies. They will be the ones that develop talent capable of delivering complex initiatives, managing change effectively, and translating innovation into sustainable value.

Putting India at the Forefront of Automotive Excellence

India continues to strengthen its position as a global automotive manufacturing and engineering hub. Significant investments across electric mobility, semiconductor manufacturing, advanced engineering, and digital technologies are creating new opportunities for growth and innovation.

Preparing professionals for this environment requires a holistic approach to workforce development—one that combines technical expertise with leadership, business acumen, and project delivery capabilities. As organizations undertake increasingly complex transformation initiatives, the ability to execute effectively will become a key differentiator.

As the automotive industry continues its transformation journey, the focus cannot be solely on building innovative technologies. Organizations must also build the capabilities required to deliver those innovations successfully. Every electric vehicle platform, smart factory initiative, digital manufacturing upgrade, or connected mobility solution ultimately relies on effective project delivery.

The organizations that will lead the future of mobility will be those that consistently convert strategy into execution and investments into outcomes. Building a workforce equipped with technical expertise, leadership capabilities, and project management skills will be essential to improving project success rates and realizing the full value of transformation initiatives.

As the pace of automotive innovation accelerates, organizations that combine technological expertise with strong project delivery capabilities will be best positioned to turn transformation ambitions into lasting competitive advantage.

Amit Goyal is Managing Director of Project Management Institute – South Asia. Views expressed are the author's personal.

Building India’s Charging Network for the Fleets That Are Coming

Autocar Professional Bureau — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 18:07:20

A common perception about electric mobility in India is that charging infrastructure is still too limited for commercial operations. That assumption may have been true a few years ago, but the reality today is far more nuanced.

Take the Delhi–Jaipur corridor as an example. Once considered a challenging route for EVs, it now has multiple fast-charging options across the highway. The experience highlights how quickly India’s charging ecosystem has evolved. At the same time, it also exposes the next challenge. The conversation is no longer about whether chargers exist. It is about whether they are reliable enough for commercial fleets that depend on them every single day.

That distinction is important because fleet operators experience charging infrastructure very differently from individual EV owners.

A personal EV may require charging once every few days. Commercial fleets, on the other hand, operate for long hours, cover significantly higher distances and depend on predictable turnaround times. For them, charging infrastructure is not simply an enabler. It is core operating infrastructure.

India has made meaningful progress over the last few years. Government initiatives such as the PM E-DRIVE Scheme and the expansion of charging corridors have accelerated deployment across highways. Interoperability between charging networks is gradually improving, making intercity travel more practical than it was even two years ago. These developments deserve recognition because they have laid the foundation for the next phase of EV adoption.

However, infrastructure availability alone does not determine whether a commercial fleet can operate efficiently. The biggest challenge today is reliability.

For a private EV owner, arriving at a charger that is temporarily unavailable may simply mean driving to the next station. For a fleet operator managing customer journeys, that same situation can disrupt schedules, increase waiting time and affect customer confidence in electric mobility itself. Uptime matters far more than the number of chargers shown on a map.

The experience also varies dramatically across corridors. Some routes have reached a level where commercial EV operations are becoming routine. Others continue to have significant gaps despite increasing travel demand. This uneven development makes route planning one of the most critical operational decisions for fleet operators today.

Another important distinction is between infrastructure built for individual users and infrastructure designed for fleets. Commercial operators require fast, predictable charging that fits into tightly managed schedules. They value consistent uptime, shorter charging cycles and dependable service much more than simply having another charging point available nearby. As EV fleets continue to grow, these requirements will become increasingly important.

Charging Point Operators therefore have an opportunity to rethink how they serve commercial mobility.

The first priority should be greater transparency around station-level uptime. Fleet operators make decisions based on reliability, not network size. Publishing consistent performance metrics would help operators plan routes with far greater confidence.

The second priority is creating dedicated service offerings for fleets. Service-level commitments, priority access during peak hours and digital reservation capabilities would allow commercial operators to plan charging as efficiently as they plan vehicle utilisation.

Third, charging investments should increasingly follow commercial mobility corridors instead of only high-visibility routes. Passenger demand often develops faster than infrastructure, and aligning deployment with actual fleet movement can improve utilisation for both operators and charging networks.

Finally, India’s charging ecosystem must continue to be designed around real operating conditions. Commercial EVs function across diverse weather, road and grid environments. Building resilient charging infrastructure that performs consistently under these conditions will be critical for long-term adoption.

India’s EV journey is entering a new phase. The initial objective was to demonstrate that electric mobility was possible. The next objective is to make it dependable at scale.

As commercial fleets expand across cities and intercity routes, success will increasingly depend on infrastructure that delivers reliability rather than simply availability. Fleet operators, charging companies, vehicle manufacturers and policymakers all have a shared opportunity to shape that future together.

The progress made over the last few years is encouraging. The focus now should be on ensuring that the charging ecosystem grows not only in size, but also in consistency, resilience and operational excellence. That is what will ultimately determine how quickly commercial electric mobility scales across India.

Naveen Gupta is Founder & CEO of Trev Mobility. Views expressed are the author's personal.