Electric bus fleet size in India 2021, by city

Optimistically India would fully electrify the public bus fleet by 2030. In 2021, there were close to one thousand electric buses used in public transport in India. With 246 e-buses, Mumbai ranked the top in the country.

The need to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels and the urgent concern over climate change have been the main motivation behind the growing popularity of electric vehicles throughout the world. Given that India is still lagging when it comes to the ratio of cars per thousand people in comparison with many other countries, the majority of the population still rely on public transport to get around. Hence, the electrification of the public transport sector has become the focus to reduce India’s carbon emissions and improve urban air quality.

Electric vehicles industry in India

The electric vehicles industry is still at an embryonic stage in India. It counts less than one percent of the total vehicle sales, and only 0.2 percent of cars sold in financial year 2021 were electric or hybrid. However, India is a huge market for vehicles, even a small percentage would be translated into significant volume. More than 90 percent of electric vehicles on Indian road are low-speed electric scooters. Optimistically, India would fully electrify the two-wheeler sales for both low and high-speed types by 2030. Major manufacturers for electric buses in India are Foton-PMI, Olectra-BYD, Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, and JBM-Solaris.

Government incentives

Despite all the potential benefits of adopting e-buses, financial considerations, such as higher initial costs of electrification the bus fleet, and higher maintenance cost in short to middle term, have limited the pace of electrification of the bus transport section. The Indian government announced the Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid and) Electric Vehicles (FAME) subsidy scheme to facilitate this transition in 2015, and FAME II has been effective since April 2019 for three years with an expenditure of 100 billion Indian rupees.