Electric cabs made up just 2.4% of India’s taxi fleet for 2024-25, and their growth is clustering in a few cities rather than scaling nationwide.
The problem is not demand or driver reluctance, but slow power connections, scarce charging parking and a procurement system not built for fleets.
Mandates without enabling infrastructure are pushing risk onto drivers while leaving supply, charging and DISCOM performance unresolved.
Without fixing power delivery, hub-based charging and taxi-viable EV supply, India’s electric cab transition will remain fragile and uneven.
At first glance, India’s ride-hailing sector appears to be electrifying in a steady, linear way. Electric cabs are becoming more visible around airports, a few EV-first fleets operate in select metros, and policy targets for the segment are now firmly on the table. But a closer look at the Vahan database for 2024-25 tells a sharper story. Cab electrification is not moving evenly across the country, it is clustering in a handful of places.
That clustering matters, because cabs are not just another vehicle category. They clock high daily mileage, operate in densely populated air-sheds, and are closely tied to the livelihoods of drivers and platform workers. When an electric cab works, the benefits are disproportionate: less tailpipe pollution where people live and breathe, large fuel savings per kilometre, and quieter urban mobility—without asking cities to build more roads. None of this detracts from the larger goal of shifting trips to public transport or creating safer, walkable streets. Electrifying cabs is best understood as harm reduction for a segment that is already deeply embedded in urban mobility.
The numbers underline the problem. In 2024-25, there were 3,15,347 registered cabs across India, of which only 7,591 were electric — an electrification rate of just 2.41 per cent. More tellingly, electric cabs are not spread across the country in proportion to cab demand. They are concentrated in a few jurisdictions.
The bigger story, then, is where electric cabs actually are. A small number of states and cities carry a disproportionate share, while most remain well below the national average. This is not simply about consumer awareness or driver willingness. Tracking and compliance data are uneven, but the underlying issue is systemic. Regulation, electricity distribution practices, charging infrastructure design, fleet economics and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) supply are aligning in some places — and failing to align in most others.
Four jurisdictions (Karnataka, West Bengal, Delhi and Chandigarh) account for a large share of India’s electric cabs. They are not ahead because they are uniquely enthusiastic about electrification. They are ahead because enough pieces of the ecosystem are lining up to create momentum.
Cab electrification is often framed as a simple policy lever — set targets for aggregators and fleets, and the market will respond. Targets do matter; they reduce ambiguity and signal that electrification is not optional.
But the cab market does not electrify on targets alone. It electrifies when mandates are bundled with enabling conditions that make compliance feasible: reliable charging access, fast and predictable power connections, viable business models for drivers and fleet operators, and a supply-side market that offers real product choice.
When mandates arrive without these enablers, three things tend to happen. First, compliance becomes procedural rather than substantive. Second, the risks of transition are pushed downwards—from governments and platforms to drivers and small fleet owners. Third, investment is rationally delayed because uncertainty remains high.
A credible electrification policy, therefore, is not just a mandate but an implementation contract. Governments set phased targets, and in return must deliver the ecosystem that makes those targets achievable.
Across states, electrification accelerates when five systems move together:
Aggregator regulation that provides long-term certainty, aligned with the pace of ecosystem development
Distribution companies’ (DISCOM) practices that treat charging as time-bound service delivery, not discretionary infrastructure
Charging design that solves for land, security and utilisation—not just charger counts
Cab economics that work across business models, from owner-drivers to large fleets
Supply-side readiness, including OEM access, fleet-appropriate products and viable procurement pathways
States that manage to align even parts of this bundle more consistently than others stay above the national average. Even within cities, electrification is uneven.
Cab operations are inherently metropolitan: drivers cross borders, pick up where demand exists, and charge where it is possible. When charging access, permits and enforcement stop at administrative boundaries, electrification remains trapped inside the jurisdictions that push hardest.
The supply-side picture reveals an uncomfortable truth. India’s cab market is anchored in Maruti—and Maruti is not electrifying the cab segment at all. This breaks the common policy assumption that electrification will naturally scale through routine vehicle replacement. When the dominant supplier in the cab ecosystem is absent from the transition, normal fleet turnover cannot carry it forward.
What emerges instead is a structurally lopsided pattern. States with large cab markets do not automatically become states with large electric cab fleets. Electrification grows only where alternative procurement channels exist: EV-first fleets, platform-linked leasing, permit-linked incentives, and charging access that makes non-Maruti EV operations viable.
Once Maruti is removed from the picture, India’s electric cab market appears highly concentrated among a narrow set of OEMs and taxi-eligible models, often with a single supplier doing most of the heavy lifting. This concentration is not simply the market choosing winners. It reflects a constrained funnel: limited taxi-viable EV options, weak fleet sales channels, and service networks not designed for high-mileage use.
The OEMs that feature prominently in electric cabs are not merely those with an EV product. They are those that have made that product fleet-viable — through taxi-eligible variants, after-sales capacity along high-mileage corridors, financing tie-ups, predictable parts availability, and a willingness to engage with fleet operators on uptime.
OEMs that remain absent are not necessarily behind on technology. More often, they lack a commercial pathway: either the taxi-eligible product is missing, fleet sales channels are weak, service networks are thin for high-mileage use, or the brand strategy avoids taxi positioning entirely. In the cab segment, these factors matter far more than model range. Drivers and fleet managers optimise for uptime and daily cost, not aspirational branding.
This is why zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandates must be understood as instruments of supply resilience, not symbolic policy checklists. If cities are serious about electrifying cabs, taxi-viable EV supply cannot be left to voluntary product cycles.
The implication is straightforward. Cab electrification cannot be framed only as an aggregator obligation. It also requires supply-side tools: aggregated procurement, fleet-spec service and uptime requirements, and ZEV-style obligations that expand taxi-viable EV supply—bundled with DISCOM and charging reforms that make high-mileage operations viable.
Electrification rates can look impressive while the market underneath remains structurally brittle. At the state level, Delhi’s electric cab fleet is heavily concentrated in a single OEM, while Karnataka and West Bengal show greater diversity. Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra show different mixes that reflect varying supply pathways, fleet preferences, and local operational realities.
This is not just market trivia. It determines how resilient vehicle electrification is to supply shocks, how quickly service networks get overwhelmed, and how much negotiating power fleets have on pricing and uptime.
The pattern becomes clearer at the city level. Some cities are almost entirely single-OEM electrified; others show a genuinely multi-OEM market. In single-OEM cities, electrification can stall for reasons unrelated to demand: a model discontinuation, a service backlog, a parts shortage, or a financing partner pulling back.
Cab electrification is often framed as a transport challenge. In practice, it is equally a distribution infrastructure and governance problem. Electric cabs depend on charging hubs and depots, which in turn depend on distribution infrastructure.
On the ground, securing just a 70 kW power connection can take four to six months. Transformer upgrades, upstream approvals and local tenders routinely stretch timelines. In harder cases, energisation drags on for a year or more, with some projects pending for nearly two years.
This does two things: it pushes charging to easy sites and blocks scale where demand is highest. Even where central incentives exist, delivery often bottlenecks at state nodal agencies and under-trained officers.
States that perform better typically do at least one of the following:
Provide tariff clarity and stable categories for EV charging
Coordinate transport and power planning for high-demand locations
Make single-window real: trained nodal officers and time-bound escalation
Plan grid upgrades ahead of charging hub deployment
The real constraint in urban charging goes beyond coverage — it is land, security, and uptime.
Where chargers sit in open, low-surveillance locations, theft and vandalism become a recurring cost as cables and charging guns contain copper and are easy targets. That turns operations and maintenance (O&M) into a constant firefight, and unreliable chargers quickly become installed but unusable infrastructure. This is why the most scalable approach for cab electrification is hub-and-depot charging:
Clusters of 5-10 chargers at one location
Predictable security and maintenance
High utilisation, lower tariffs, less idle capex
Policy can accelerate this shift by changing how charging is planned and tendered: prioritising hubs near airports and transit nodes; mandating uptime SLAs, security and maintenance; and requiring real-time status visibility so drivers do not waste earning hours.
Cab electrification will not scale through one-size-fits-all targets because the cab market is not one business model. It includes owner-drivers without home charging, small fleet owners with thin margins, large depot-based fleets, and EV-first managed operators.
Policy must reflect these realities. For owner-drivers, leasing terms, predictable monthly installements and confidence in end-of-life value matter as much as charging access. For fleets, hub charging, contracted kilometres and time-bound power connections matter more than small per-vehicle subsidies. For platforms, compliance should track outcomes — electric kilometres and uptime — not just vehicle counts.
A practical roadmap needs to bundle mandates with enablers and sequence the transition:
Fix the infrastructure: Set service-level agreements with DISCOMs and nodal-agencies for approvals and connections; shift to hub-first charging in cab hotspots with security and O&M built in; mandate uptime reporting and real-time visibility; start outcome-based support linked to verified electric-kilometres; and create separate compliance paths for owner-drivers vs fleets. This reduces downtime, speeds commissioning, and lowers risk for drivers and financiers.
Bundle mandates with procurement and finance: Keep phased targets, but tie them to enabler milestones. Use procurement like airports, institutions and public sector undertakings to lock in kilometres as uptime and minimum-load clauses already exist. Add credit guarantees and standardised leasing, and link transition plans to licensing and fleet expansion.
Make supply resilient and measure what matters: Deploy ZEV-style obligations to expand taxi-viable electric vehicle supply; unlock municipal land and parking for hubs; and shift performance metrics from vehicles electrified to electric kilometres delivered.
Most states are not failing because they lack targets. They are failing because the transition is being demanded of drivers and fleets while the enabling ecosystem remains slow, fragmented and under-specified. Approvals taking months, unreliable charging, finance that cannot price execution risk, and a supply market where the largest cab OEM has not electrified at all actively undermines the transition.
Cab electrification will scale only when mandates are bundled with DISCOM performance, hub-first charging, business-model-specific finance, and supply-side obligations that make electric cabs a viable daily reality rather than a policy aspiration.