India's EV push needs strategic course correction

India’s electric vehicle transition is being framed as inevitable. Policy incentives, state-level ambition and rising adoption numbers suggest momentum is firmly on track.

Clean mobility cannot be reduced to rapid EV adoption. It must be anchored in four deeper pillars: secure supply chains, cleaner energy inputs, strong domestic industrial capability and a shift toward efficient mass transportation.

The most immediate vulnerability lies in supply chains. India is scaling EV adoption while remaining almost entirely dependent on imports for critical battery minerals and components. The global EV ecosystem is already witnessing resource nationalism, export controls and technology gatekeeping. In such a landscape, India risks replacing one form of dependence with another. Oil imports are diversified and globally traded. Battery minerals are geographically concentrated and politically sensitive.

Policy has begun responding through production-linked incentives (PLIs), mineral diplomacy and early investments in cell manufacturing. But there is still a tendency to equate assembly with capability. True resilience lies upstream, in refining, processing and materials science. Without that depth, India will remain a price-taker in a market it is otherwise helping to expand.

There is also a sequencing task that remains under-acknowledged. Adoption is being accelerated ahead of ecosystem readiness. Charging infrastructure is growing, but grid capacity and grid quality are uneven. More importantly, the electricity feeding this transition is still significantly coal-based. This is where the policy conversation needs to become more honest. EVs reduce urban pollution, which is a critical public health gain. But climate gains depend on the energy mix.

There is also a deeper conceptual gap in how clean mobility is being framed. If the objective is to reduce emissions at scale, the emphasis cannot remain disproportionately on individual vehicle ownership, even if those vehicles are electric. Public transport systems powered by clean energy — whether electric buses, metro rail or shared mobility networks — deliver far greater emissions reduction per unit of capital deployed. They also address congestion, land use and urban efficiency in ways private vehicles never can. A policy architecture that privileges individual EV adoption over mass transit risks solving for the visible while neglecting the structural. Clean mobility, at its core, is not about replacing every internal combustion engine with a battery. It is about moving more people with less energy.

India also underutilises alternatives that can materially shift both passenger and freight movement. Inland waterways, coastal shipping and rail-linked logistics corridors offer lower-emission pathways that remain peripheral in policy thinking. Equally, urban transport continues to suffer from poor integration, where metros, buses, and rail networks operate in silos rather than as a seamless system. Without better town planning and a genuinely multimodal design, mobility will remain fragmented, inefficient, and far more carbon-intensive than it needs to be.

The same gap is visible in lifecycle thinking. Battery production is resource-intensive, and end-of-life management remains a weak link. Recycling frameworks are emerging but are not yet scaled, standardised or economically compelling.

The current policy architecture is heavily subsidy-driven on the demand side, with industrial policy still catching up. This creates a risk of mispriced adoption, where market signals are shaped more by incentives than by underlying efficiency or sustainability.

Clean mobility requires a decade of aligned investments across supply chains, grid infrastructure, manufacturing capacity and demand creation. Private capital will only commit at scale when there is visibility of stable policy, predictable demand and viable unit economics. The current approach signals intent, but it does not yet fully de-risk long-term investment.

At present, India’s EV push sits across various state policies and national policies and incentive frameworks, often moving at different speeds and with different objectives. A national transport strategy that integrates urban planning, energy transition, industrial policy and mobility behaviour is still missing. India’s transport future will not be defined by a single technology. Urban mobility, freight, two-wheelers and long-haul transport have very different economics and energy requirements. Hybrids, biofuels, CNG, hydrogen and EVs will all have roles to play. Policy should enable this plurality rather than prematurely converge on one pathway.

(The author is a corporate adviser and independent director on corporate boards. X: @ssmumbai)