If the trend in the first three months of this year holds, India could see 2023 as a record year for EV sales. Since January this year, Indians have purchased a total of 278,000 electric vehicles, with an average monthly purchase of more than 90,000 electric vehicles. Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said this in a written reply to the Lok Sabha on Thursday. At this pace, by the end of 2023, India is likely to beat last year’s record high of 1 million electric vehicles sold.
Gadkari sources EV sales data from its division’s Vahan portal registration records. According to Vahan, EV registrations in India will almost triple from 329,000 in 2021 to 1.02 million in 2022. The minister said states that are not part of the Vahan registration portal may be included in the coming days. This will help collate more data on EV registrations. Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are moving towards Wahan, he said. He did not specify whether states like Telangana and Lakshadweep would be included in the portal soon.
Indians have bought 2.17 million electric vehicles as of March 15 this year, state minister for heavy industries Krishan Pal Gurjar said recently. He revealed that Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of electric vehicles. India’s largest state registered 465,000 electric vehicles in the first three months. It was followed by states such as Maharashtra with 226,000 EV registrations and Delhi with around 203,000 EV registrations.
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India’s EV industry is dominated by Tata Motors in the four-wheel passenger vehicle segment. With models such as Nexon EV, Tigor EV and Tiago EV, Tata holds more than 80% market share. In the electric two-wheeler segment, manufacturers such as Hero, Ola Electric, Ather Energy, and Okinawa Autotech are the leading companies driving sales growth.
Gadkari also said that India scrapped about 8,220 old vehicles from January last year to March 20 this year since the vehicle scrappage policy came into effect. Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 6,247 scrapped vehicles. Gujarat and Assam came second and third with 1,244 and 357 vehicles scrapped respectively.
First published date: March 23, 2023 at 16:03 PM CST
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