New Delhi: India’s worsening air-pollution crisis has placed the clean-mobility transition at the centre of the national policy agenda, yet progress on electric-vehicle (EV) adoption remains markedly slower than experts and policymakers had hoped.
This mismatch was visible during a high-level meeting chaired recently by the principal secretary to the Prime Minister, where officials flagged that more than 37% of the registered vehicles in Delhi-NCR still fall under the outdated BS-I to BS-III emission norms. It was also underscored that Delhi, while occupying just 2.7% of the NCR’s geographical area, is home to over half of the region’s total vehicles — around 1.57 crore out of 2.97 crore. The meeting called on states and Union Territories to accelerate the shift to EVs, expand charging infrastructure and intensify enforcement in order to deliver measurable improvement in air quality.
Despite repeated policy pushes, the scale of EV adoption has yet to reflect the severity of India’s pollution challenge. According to Niti Aayog’s 2024 report on the sector, EV sales nationally grew from about 50,000 units in 2016 to more than two million in 2024, but India’s penetration remains well below the global average. The report pointed to “high initial acquisition costs” as the single most significant deterrent to widespread uptake. While the long-term running costs of EVs are lower than those of petrol or diesel vehicles, consumers continue to hesitate at the point of purchase.
A separate study by Deloitte for the Global Automotive Consumer Survey confirmed this trend, noting that more than one-third of potential EV buyers in India view high purchase prices and long-term battery replacement costs as major barriers. The study concluded that Indian consumers “perceive EVs as financially risky assets in the absence of clarity on battery life and residual value”, especially in the four-wheeler market. In a vehicle economy dominated by budget-segment buyers, and where resale value is often a decisive factor, this perception significantly delays transition.
Charging infrastructure represents the next major hurdle. Although charging networks have expanded in most metropolitan cities, the pace still falls short of what consumers require for range confidence. The annual Niti Aayog assessment on clean mobility highlighted that limited charging accessibility in residential complexes, uneven distribution of charging stations in cities, and long charging times collectively “encourage buyers to revert to familiar fossil-fuel vehicles”.
Research by the Clean Mobility Shift initiative also indicates that a majority of potential EV buyers — 58% — would reconsider an EV purchase if they were guaranteed charging access at home or at work. This barrier is particularly acute in apartment-heavy urban areas, where the approval process for setting up chargers can be slow and frequently opposed by housing societies.
On highways, the lack of predictable fast-charging availability further compounds resistance. Industry commentators have noted that public charging must become “boringly reliable” for mainstream consumers to make the switch. A former senior office-bearer of the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles remarked at a mobility forum that “EV owners need range certainty, not optimistic assumptions,” emphasizing that practical usage experience will determine adoption more than subsidy announcements.
Structural Challenges
Compounding these difficulties are structural challenges in the manufacturing ecosystem. India continues to depend heavily on imported cells, motors and electronics required for EV production. A comparative study published in the Journal of Sustainable Transport Systems in 2024 observed that “relatively low production volumes prevent Indian EV manufacturers from achieving economies of scale, keeping prices high despite technological improvement”.
The study also noted that global supply-chain pressures around lithium, cobalt and nickel — the key minerals used in battery manufacturing — directly influence the cost of EVs in India. Although advances in battery-safety engineering have reduced risk considerably, public memory of the early 2022 e-scooter fire incidents still has a lingering impact on buying sentiment.
Policy uncertainty contributes to the inertia. While the Centre’s FAME-II scheme and state-level EV policies have introduced subsidies and tax concessions, the regulatory landscape remains inconsistent across states. A 2023 mobility-transition review by IIT Madras found that the absence of inter-governmental coordination has resulted in “delayed implementation of incentives, inconsistent registration benefits and operational confusion for automobile manufacturers and fleet operators”.
This fragmentation surfaced during the PMO-led review meeting, where states were pressed to expedite notification of cab and bike-aggregator EV policies and develop a unified portal for monitoring compliance across borders.
Consumer Psychology
Beyond structural and regulatory hurdles, consumer psychology continues to shape the pace of adoption. India’s used-car market has long influenced purchase decisions in the new-car segment, and EVs still suffer from a weak resale ecosystem. In January this year, a senior representative of the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations stated at an industry meet that “for Indian consumers, resale value is not secondary — it is fundamental. EVs will enter the mainstream only when the secondary market matures”.
This hesitancy is reflected in sales figures. According to VAHAN, EV adoption in Delhi remains small compared with petrol vehicles: through the first nine months of 2025 Delhi saw only about 27,028 electric two-wheelers registered, while roughly 3.2 lakh petrol two-wheelers were registered over the same period. Nationally, VAHAN-based tallies show a much stronger rise in electric passenger cars in 2025 — registrations of electric passenger four-wheelers reached roughly 1.44 lakh (≈144,352) in the first 10 months of the year — but petrol/diesel cars still account for the bulk of new registrations.
The consequences of this slow pace are not abstract. Air pollution remains a public-health emergency in urban India. The Commission for Air Quality Management has repeatedly identified vehicular emissions as one of the top contributors to particulate matter in cities. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 1.67 million deaths in India each year are attributable to air pollution-linked illnesses. In hyper-polluted cities like Delhi, change in the vehicle mix on the road has become a public-health necessity rather than a technological experiment.
Even policy insiders agree that the era of incremental progress has passed. A senior government official who participated in the PMO meeting said, on condition of anonymity, that “Delhi-NCR cannot rely only on enforcement; it must visibly transition toward clean mobility. The shift to EVs has to be something citizens see on the road, not only in policy files”.
Mass Adoption
Experts emphasize that no single solution will trigger mass adoption. Lower upfront pricing, favourable financing and battery-leasing models, dependable charging access in residential and commercial areas, coherent state-to-state regulation and trustworthy resale infrastructure must grow in parallel.
Many in the automobile industry believe that fleet electrification — in ride-hailing, delivery, corporate transport and commercial logistics — will provide the visibility and consumer familiarity needed to normalise EVs as everyday vehicles rather than niche aspirational products.
What is increasingly clear is that India cannot afford further delay. The transport sector will remain the dominant contributor to urban pollution unless the vehicle-mix on the road changes significantly within the next decade. Policymakers articulate a target of 30% EV penetration by 2030, but current trends suggest that only a forceful and coordinated response will make that outcome possible.
The window for slow progress has narrowed dramatically. With population and vehicle ownership rising faster than mobility infrastructure can expand, India’s EV transition is no longer a question of ambition — it is one of necessity.