Six states account for 60% of EV sales in first eight months of 2023

A new analysis shows sales of electric vehicles (EVs) in India in the first eight months of 2023 has already reached the annual sales volumes for 2022. It also reveals only a handful of states are driving the electric mobility adoption.

September 8, 2023 Uma Gupta

Image: Adam Jones/Flickr

Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Rajasthan accounted for 60% of the EV sales in India during the Jan.-Aug. period of 2023. The remaining 40% of EV sales are scattered across 22 states and eight union territories, highlighting that a handful of states are driving e-mobility growth.

This was revealed by an EV dashboard on www.cleanmobilityshift.com that draws, in real time, EV sales data from the government-owned Vahan dashboard.

EV sales in the first eight months of 2023, at 964.51k units, are nearly the same as EV sales for 2022. EV penetration (EV sales against total vehicle sales) in this period touched 6.4%.

EV sales in 2023 are projected to reach 1.2 million, compared to one million last year.

Aarti Khosla, Director of Climate Trends said, “E-mobility has come a long way in India and has gained significant acceptance as a mode of clean transport. The Prime Minister has also acknowledged the big role that transport decarbonization will play in India’s sustainable development efforts. It’s important to sustain narratives in the public debate on why EVs are clean transport, and what is the sales data telling us about ground realities, hits, and misses of policies. This dashboard will help with fact-based, data-driven stories, and support researchers, journalists, and the public in understanding EV growth in different geographies, across time and vehicle types.”

The dashboard shows that while electric two-wheeler sales are growing well in numbers, their penetration is still low at nearly 5% in 2023. This shows that electric two-wheelers are still not a preferred choice among consumers and barriers to their adoption still remain.

Shikha Rokadiya, Researcher, ICCT, said “Demand-side incentives will need to be continued for some time to make costs of EVs more palatable to end users, both by the central and state governments. But at the same time, attracting investments in EV manufacturing that eventually lead to economies of scale and thereby bring down cost, also needs to be addressed in parallel. Subsidies alone cannot drive mass volumes.”

Narayan Kumar, associate director, e-mobility, Shakti SEF, added to this discussion, “Finding ways to unlock affordable and accessible finance is also a way of encouraging two wheeler sales without relying heavily on subsidies. Currently, SBI offers an interest rate as high as 18% for two wheeler purchase, which is not at all affordable for the common man. Along with this, creating strong regulatory frameworks that builds the confidence of investors to invest in the EV ecosystem is the need of the hour.”

The dashboard reveals every second three-wheeler sold in India is now electric. Ladakh, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Assam and Uttar Pradesh have achieved 80% penetration of electric three-wheelers in 2023. Goa has the highest electric two-wheeler penetration (17%) in 2023. In Kerala, Delhi and Goa, electric four-wheeler penetration in 2023 has crossed 4%, indicating the start of a shift in consumer preference.

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