India's electric vehicles are overwhelmingly two-wheelers
Cars are 8% of India's 2.36 million battery-vehicle registrations, where gas has outsold the battery four to one. In 2026, that gap began closing.
Diesel registrations in India's passenger car market have held steady at roughly 18% for four consecutive years since 2021. The share petrol lost was taken almost entirely by compressed natural gas, which nearly tripled its car market share since 2015. While battery-electric vehicles surpassed CNG across all vehicle categories in 2022 to reach 8.05% of total national registrations in 2025, two-wheelers and three-wheelers made up 92% of those 2.36 million electric units. Electric passenger cars represented just 4.4% of new car sales.
The national fuel mix since 2015
Petrol did not begin its decline immediately over the past decade. Its share of new vehicle registrations actually rose from 83.5% in 2015 to an 85.5% peak in 2020, as pandemic disruption pushed buyers toward personal two-wheelers. Only after 2020 did petrol begin giving up ground, falling to 74.95% by 2025 and 71.97% in the 2026 year-to-date registry data.[1][2] Over the same decade, diesel fell from nearly 14% to 10.2%, having peaked above 17% a decade earlier.
The replacement was split between natural gas and batteries. Compressed natural gas grew steadily from 1.45% of registrations in 2015 to 5.06% in 2025. Battery-electric vehicles grew far faster: after lingering below 1% through 2020, battery registrations surged past CNG in 2022 (4.71% to 3.41%) and reached 8.05% in 2025, crossing 10% in the first half of 2026.[2]
Electrification by vehicle class
A cross-tabulation of vehicle classes against fuel types from the transport ministry's registry reveals where the 2.36 million battery-electric registrations in 2025 actually landed.[1] Two-wheelers accounted for nearly 55% of the national total (1.29 million units), while purpose-built e-rickshaws contributed another 24%. Electric three-wheeled passenger autos reached 31.7% penetration within their own segment, a higher adoption rate than two-wheelers. Passenger cars, by contrast, accounted for just 8.0% of all electric registrations in India (187,754 units).
| Vehicle class | 2025 registrations, all fuels | Battery-electric | Share of class (%) | Share of all BEV (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Two-wheelers | 20,436,188 | 1,292,633 | 6.3 | 54.8 |
| E-rickshaws (passenger + goods) | 560,292 | 560,189 | 99.98 | 23.8 |
| Three-wheelers, passenger | 662,598 | 210,152 | 31.7 | 8.9 |
| Passenger cars | 4,269,497 | 187,754 | 4.4 | 8.0 |
The scale of e-rickshaw adoption represents one of the fastest transitions in the fleet. From barely 5,100 registrations in 2015, the segment reached over 560,000 in 2025. Because industry estimates indicate several hundred thousand additional e-rickshaws operate unregistered across tier-2 and tier-3 towns, the official registry likely understates total electric road mileage in commercial passenger transport.
Passenger cars: CNG displacement and the electric pickup
Isolated from the national total, passenger cars followed a different trajectory. Diesel's share of new cars dropped sharply from 44.3% in 2015 to 18.0% in 2021. Since that drop, it has held steady between 17.8% and 18.6% for four consecutive years. The subsequent decline came from petrol, which peaked at 68.6% in 2021 before falling more than seventeen percentage points to 51.4% by 2025.
Compressed natural gas absorbed most of petrol's share, rising from 8.4% of new cars in 2021 to 17.2% in 2025. Hybrids reached 8.35%. Battery-electric cars expanded tenfold over the same period, growing from 0.43% to 4.4%, but remained the fourth-largest powertrain in passenger cars, trailing CNG by nearly four to one.
That ratio began shifting in 2026. Over the first eight months of the year, battery-electric car registrations reached 188,907 units, already surpassing full-year 2025 volume and lifting electric car share to 6.4%. While CNG continued to rise to roughly 19%, the CNG-to-battery ratio narrowed to three to one as electric car registrations outpaced the growth of both diesel and hybrids.
The shakeout in pure-play electric two-wheelers
Five companies built their India business on selling nothing but electric two-wheelers: Ather Energy, Hero Electric, Okinawa Autotech, Ola Electric and Revolt Intellicorp. Combined, their registrations rose from a few thousand a year before 2018 to 584,045 in 2024, the peak of the segment's first boom, before falling 25.8% to 433,554 in 2025. The decline was not evenly spread. Hero Electric, the largest of the five as recently as 2019, fell from a 2022 peak of 105,207 registrations to 554 in 2025, a 99.5% collapse. Okinawa Autotech fell from 104,927 in its own 2022 peak to 2,241, down 97.9%. Ola Electric, which became the largest of the five by 2023, peaked at 429,188 registrations in 2024 and fell to 204,534 the following year, a 52.3% drop.
Ather Energy is the exception, growing every year since entering the registry to reach 215,039 registrations in 2025, up 57.5% on 2024. While the registry does not track dealer networks, financing availability, or service turnaround times, the divergence reflects a widening gap between early low-speed assemblers and makers that invested in proprietary platforms and after-sales support.
The trajectory of India's fleet electrification depends on whether passenger cars begin to follow the transition already established in lighter categories. While electric penetration in three-wheeled passenger autos reached 31.7% in 2025, passenger cars closed the year at 4.4%, trailing CNG by four to one. The first eight months of 2026 indicate that baseline is shifting: electric car registrations surpassed full-year 2025 volume and narrowed the gap with CNG to three to one. Whether that pace holds will determine whether India's battery transition remains concentrated in two- and three-wheelers or expands into mainstream personal mobility.
- MoRTH/NIC, Vahan4 legacy dashboard (vahan.parivahan.gov.in/vahan4dashboard) — Fuel, Vehicle Class, Maker and Vehicle Class × Fuel cross-tabs, 2003-2025 plus a Jan-Aug 2026 partial year captured 13 August 2026, two days before the portal's discontinuation.
- MoRTH/NIC, Vahan public analytics dashboard (analytics.parivahan.gov.in) — 2026 year-to-date fuel-type figures, live source.
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