NEW DELHI: Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL), the Centre's demand aggregation agency, wants the government to name it as nodal agency for tendering electric trucks under the ₹10,900-crore PM E-Drive scheme, two people aware of the development said.
This comes less than a fortnight after CESL concluded the country’s largest electric bus tender of 10,900 units under the PM E-Drive scheme, which seeks to accelerate adoption of electric mobility and focuses on public transport, freight, and ambulances to reduce carbon emissions.
CESL’s plan involves reducing the upfront cost of these e-trucks and setting up electric vehicle (EV) chargers by building scale through demand aggregation. CESL, the subsidiary of Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL), has started talks with Indian ports that are big users of trucks to ferry goods, said the first of the two persons cited earlier, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.
This focus on e-trucks comes at a time when the incentives for two- and three-wheelers under the PM E-Drive scheme are set to lapse in March 2026.
“CESL is looking to become the nodal agency for e-trucks also, now that the e-bus tender is done,” said the person cited above, referring to the recently-concluded tender for 10,900 e-buses.
“There have been talks for becoming the nodal agency, and some talks with 1-2 ports also. Each port has thousands of trucks operating inside,” said this person, adding that CESL’s plan is to provide charging infrastructure and aggregate demand to discover cheaper prices for e-truck operations at scale.
The second person said that CESL’s experience in tendering electric buses under central government schemes such as the ₹10,900-crore PM E-Drive and the ₹57,613-crore PM E-bus Sewa Scheme had helped cultivate an understanding with manufacturers such as Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland, which also make electric trucks.
The ministry of heavy industries (MHI) has identified ports, steel, cement and logistics as sectors to generate demand for electric trucks under the PM E-Drive scheme, Mint reported in April last year.
Queries emailed to CESL, the MHI, as well as e-truck and e-bus makers Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland on 4 January remained unanswered.
CESL's attempt to become the nodal agency for e-truck tendering comes in the backdrop of its cash-strapped parent EESL exiting multiple joint ventures while looking to sell its stake in smart metering company IntelliSmart, as reported by Mint earlier.
Under the PM E-Drive scheme, the government has allocated ₹500 crore for reducing the upfront cost of procuring about 5,500 e-trucks, with the price of each truck being lowered by about ₹2-9 lakh. A heavy-duty electric truck can cost upwards of ₹1-1.15 crore. This is the first time the government has allocated benefits for e-truck adoption.
To be sure, incentives under PM E-Drive are contigent on companies meeting stiff localization norms, as the scheme aims to bolster domestic manufacturing. Under the PM E-Drive scheme, localization norms are laid out in the phased manufacturing programme, which lists the components that manufacturers can import until a cutoff date.
The cutoff date for the import of e-truck components such as heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, electric compressors for brakes, charging inlets and battery management systems was 1 September 2025, with imports of some parts allowed till 1 March 2026.
Manufacturers have struggled in complying with the scheme’s localization guidelines, especially in the wake of the rare earth magnet export control order by the Chinese government in April last year.
Rare earth magnets are used in manufacturing sub-assemblies of traction motors used in these trucks, and importing full sub-assemblies instead of just magnets could take away incentives under the scheme.
“In a freight sector where buyers and operators are private sector entities, gathering demand to create scale is of the essence, as it could lead to lower prices being discovered. The value is in volume when it comes to electric trucks,” said Amit Bhatt, India director of the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).
He added that adoption of clean freight transport hinges on affordability, as electric trucks continue to be 2-2.5x pricier than their diesel counterparts.
Demand aggregation for electric trucks assumes importance as adoption of zero-emission battery-operated freight transport has remained slow, especially in medium and heavy-duty trucks, which are incentivized under the PM E-Drive scheme.
Approximately 560 medium and heavy-duty e-trucks were sold in the country in 2025, up from about 220 units in 2024, and 325 in 2023, according to the government’s Vahan portal that keeps a digital record of vehicle registrations.
No e-trucks have been incentivized yet under the PM E-Drive scheme, the scheme’s official dashboard showed on 5 January.