India's electric vehicle race will not be won by a single manufacturer or technology, but by an ecosystem capable of addressing charging access, after-sales service, financing, localisation and the high upfront cost of electric vehicles, industry leaders said during a panel discussion at India Energy Storage Week (IESW) 2026.
Speaking at the session titled "Who Is Winning India's EV Race?", Subrata Mitra, Senior Vice President, Ather Energy, said the electric two-wheeler story was part of the broader mobility transition and that the biggest beneficiary so far had been the consumer. "The first winner is the consumer," he said, adding that the Middle East crisis had also accelerated EV adoption. Mitra said the breadth of electric two-wheeler offerings available in India, across established manufacturers and startups, was not seen anywhere else in the world. However, he identified charging access as the biggest impediment to faster adoption. "Usually people who have charging at home are buying EVs. We need a mechanism to enable charging," he said.
Charging, Service And Localisation Emerge As Key Battlegrounds
While charging remains a critical concern, Dr Uday Narang, Founder, Omega Seiki Mobility, said the conversation around India's EV journey must also acknowledge the progress already made. "The work that Ather has done is commendable. We also need to discuss successes," he said.
According to Narang, after-sales service and the availability of spare parts have been among the biggest challenges for EV adoption, particularly in Tier II, III and IV cities. Charging infrastructure alone, he argued, would not be sufficient to scale electric mobility without reliable service and parts availability.
A stronger after-sales ecosystem would also help attract financing and create a secondary market for EVs, while lower financing costs could further accelerate adoption. Pointing to China, Narang said its oil demand had declined because the country had built an ecosystem capable of supporting electric vehicles at scale.
The challenges are particularly pronounced in the heavy commercial vehicle segment. Jayesh Shelar, Chief Marketing Officer, Blue Energy Motors, said heavy-duty trucks account for only around 1 per cent of transport but contribute nearly 40 per cent of its pollution. "It is not battery swapping versus fixed charging," Shelar said, arguing that the real challenge was overcoming the barriers preventing greater penetration of electric heavy-duty trucks.
The biggest deterrent, he said, was the high capital cost, with batteries accounting for around 40-50 per cent of vehicle costs. Reducing technology costs is therefore one pillar of accelerating adoption, while the second involves addressing range anxiety, inadequate charging infrastructure and vehicle downtime. Battery swapping, he said, had emerged as one potential solution to these challenges. "The question is not who will win the race in India, but how will India win this race. We have to create pilot projects first," Shelar said.
Beyond vehicle adoption, the discussion also raised a deeper question about how much economic and strategic value India is actually capturing from its EV transition. Akshay Parihar, Executive Director, Deloitte, said, “We should ask where the economic and strategic value lies.” Within batteries, Parihar said, economic value is concentrated in cells, while in motors, strategic dependencies lie in magnets, semiconductors and power electronics. The central question, therefore, is whether India has genuinely captured the value embedded in these critical components.
He described India's EV localisation journey as having three layers: assembly localisation, component localisation and, most importantly, the localisation of technology and materials. "The question is how fast can we move towards the third layer," Parihar said.
Industry experts indicated that India's EV race is increasingly moving beyond headline sales numbers. The industry's next phase will be determined by whether the country can make charging more accessible, build dependable service networks beyond major cities, reduce financing and technology costs, and capture greater strategic value through deeper localisation of critical technologies and materials.