Abstract:

India’s shared vehicle market has undergone significant structural changes in recent years. Integrating electric cars in commercial services, which is to say in ride-hailing operations, is a promising way to both stimulate their uptake and dramatically increase the public’s awareness of and exposure to the technology. This paper builds on previous ICCT studies about electrifying ride-hailing fleets in U.S. and EU markets by expanding the view to conditions in the Indian market. Specifically, this paper focuses on the states of Delhi and Telangana and on four-wheelers, which accounted for 17% of new vehicle sales of passenger cars and commercial vehicles in India in fiscal year 2017–18. In this paper, the authors have evaluated the economic impacts of incentives for drivers operating on ride-hailing platforms to switch to electric models.  In addition, the authors assess the impact of proposed and hypothetical policies that would enhance the cost-competitiveness of electric ridehailing vehicles; the aim is to illuminate how the Central Government of India and state governments, along with other stakeholders including cab aggregators, power utilities, and charging providers, might induce purchase decisions toward electric vehicles in ride-hailing fleets.