India is trying to accelerate the shift from diesel to electric trucks, but high vehicle costs, inadequate charging infrastructure and limited demand have kept adoption low.
Against this backdrop, a new Platform for Aggregating Clean Transport (PACT) was launched earlier this week under Niti Aayog’s 2022 e-FAST platform to aggregate demand for electric trucks.
Mint explains the rationale behind the move, with only 1,688 electric medium and heavy trucks sold in 2026, as compared to 266,112 diesel trucks in the same period.
Why does Niti Aayog want to move away from diesel trucks?
There are multiple reasons. Diesel trucks disproportionately impact the environment. They make up only 3% of India’s vehicles but are responsible for around 34% of its vehicular carbon emissions.
These trucks also account for 55% of India’s diesel demand, according to Niti Aayog. This has become particularly important in recent months as energy security concerns rose amid the Strait of Hormuz blockade during the US-Iran war, which started in February. India depends on imported crude oil for 85-90% of its annual demand.
India imported $123 billion worth of crude oil in FY26, down from $137 billion in the previous fiscal.
Given this dependence on imported oil, India has been pushing electric vehicles as a way to reduce its exposure to fossil fuels. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May called for faster adoption of electric mobility across various vehicle segments.
What are the challenges in shifting from diesel to electric trucks?
Electric trucks are still a nascent market in India. Only 1,688 medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks were sold till September 2026, compared with 266,112 diesel trucks in the same period.
The main hurdle is cost. An e-truck costs more than twice as much as its diesel counterpart, making it difficult for operators to procure. With upfront costs of over ₹1 crore, the asset also requires a carefully planned ecosystem of financing and charging infrastructure, which is currently not available in India.
Charging infrastructure is another major gap. Only nine, or 0.01%, of India’s 67,657 public EV charging stations have capacity higher than 240 kilowatts (kW). Such ‘superchargers’ are particularly important for heavy commercial electric vehicles such as buses and trucks, which run on high-capacity batteries of over 250 kilowatt-hours.
So, how will PACT help?
PACT is set to aggregate demand for electric trucks in smaller clusters or regions, helping to secure lower upfront costs for each truck and unlock potential benefits from financiers and charge point operators (CPOs), said Christoph Wolff, CEO, Amsterdam-based non-profit organisation Smart Freight Centre.
Smart Freight Centre is a global leader and standard setter in logistics decarbonisation, working with more than 200 of the world’s largest shippers. “With over four years of experience in India and as a leading knowledge partner to NITI Aayog’s e-FAST initiative, we bring our global and local expertise to PACT and help build a scalable model for accelerating zero-emission freight.”
"We need to look closely at what demand aggregation means in practice: what kind of demand we are aggregating, where it exists, at what level of granularity and for what purpose. A platform can be an important starting point, but it will only deliver impact if it is backed by a clear operating model that brings together stakeholders across the freight ecosystem and translates aggregated demand into action," he added.
How has government policy supported e-trucks?
The first government support for electric trucks came in the form of subsidies worth ₹500 crore for 5,643 medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks under the PM E-Drive scheme in 2024.
However, the response has been tepid because of high compliance requirements under the scheme. It requires comparable diesel trucks to be scrapped in order to claim incentives. Only 53 e-trucks had been incentiviZed under the scheme till September this year, with incentives slated to continue till FY28.
More recently, the government, through the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) under the Union power ministry, started working on fuel economy norms for trucks to reduce fuel consumption and shift to cleaner powertrains. The government, along with industry, is also building a homegrown truck-testing tool to collect real-world emissions data from India’s trucks.
Tarun Kapoor, advisor to the Prime Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), said last week at the annual convention of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) that India needs to convert to electric mobility “in a big way”, with trucks being a major focus area.
“My main concern is heavy vehicles, particularly trucks. Because unless we do something about that sector, diesel then continues to be a major bottleneck for us, because refineries can make a certain quantity of diesel, a certain quantity of petrol. So if the petrol part starts reducing we can't allow diesel to stay at the same level so that also has to reduce. Some movement towards CNG (compressed natural gas) did happen but now we need to move into electric in a big way,” said Kapoor.