India’s EV transition is often discussed through sales numbers, battery capacity and charging infrastructure. Those things matter. But there is a more basic question that deserves greater attention. Are electric vehicles being designed for India, or are they simply being sold in India? The difference is important. A country with very different price points, driving habits and mobility needs cannot build a lasting electric market by treating localisation as an assembly exercise. Product design has to begin with the Indian customer. It has to understand what people need, what they can afford and what they expect from a vehicle they may use every day.
Scale Matters
India’s ambition is enormous. The country is targeting EV sales of 30 percent in private cars, 70 percent in commercial vehicles, 40 percent in buses and 80 percent in two and three wheelers by 2030. That could mean roughly 80 million EVs on Indian roads. Such a transition cannot depend on a narrow idea of localisation. It needs products shaped around Indian requirements from the beginning. The current market already offers a clear signal. In FY26, India sold 2,658,798 EVs, giving electric vehicles an 8.62 percent share of total automotive sales. Two and three wheelers accounted for nearly 87 percent of those volumes. That tells us where product thinking needs to be especially sharp.
Design For India
Localisation is sometimes reduced to making a product cheaper. That is too limited a view. The real opportunity is to make the product more relevant. Indian electric two and three wheelers have to work within the realities of everyday mobility. Buyers are not looking only at a specification sheet. They are thinking about running costs, usability, convenience and whether the vehicle fits into their daily routine. A product designed around those questions will naturally look different from one designed for another market. Battery size, motor performance, charging, storage, comfort and technology all need to be considered together. The point is not to add more features. It is to make the right choices for the people who will actually use the vehicle.
Range Means More
Range is an important part of the EV conversation, but the industry should be careful about reducing the discussion to a single number. What matters to a customer is confidence. An advertised range has limited meaning if the vehicle does not fit the user’s daily requirements. This is where product engineering becomes critical. Battery capacity, motor performance and vehicle efficiency have to work as a complete system. The same applies to charging. A customer needs a vehicle that fits the charging arrangements available to them, whether that is at home, at work or elsewhere. The goal should be simple. An EV should remove uncertainty from daily mobility rather than create another concern for the buyer.
Supply Chain Depth
A strong Indian EV industry also needs more than domestic assembly. It needs deeper domestic capability across the technologies that make electric vehicles possible. The government’s PLI Auto scheme, with an outlay of ₹25,938 crore, specifically aims to encourage deep localisation of advanced automotive technology products and domestic supply chains. That direction is significant. Localisation can give manufacturers greater control over cost, supply and product development. The same thinking is visible in batteries. The Advanced Chemistry Cell battery PLI scheme has an outlay of ₹18,100 crore and targets 50 GWh of domestic ACC manufacturing capacity. These efforts matter because batteries are central to an EV. A stronger domestic base can make the industry less dependent on external supply and better placed to develop products suited to Indian demand.
Value Must Lead
The biggest test of localisation is not how many components are made locally. It is whether the customer gets a better product at a sensible price. The reduction in GST on electric vehicles to 5 percent is an important support for adoption. GST on EV chargers and charging stations has also been reduced from 18 percent to 5 percent. But policy support cannot replace good product decisions. Manufacturers still have to decide where every rupee of engineering and technology should go. The Indian market is too large and too diverse for a one size fits all approach. Affordability has to remain central, but affordability should not mean compromising on what customers actually need. It should mean building the product around those needs in the first place.
India’s electric mobility opportunity is too large to be approached as a simple transition from petrol to batteries. It is a chance to rethink how vehicles are conceived for this market. The numbers already show that two and three wheelers will be central to that story. The policy environment is also pushing the industry towards deeper domestic production and technology capability. The next step is to take that thinking into the product itself. Localisation should influence the decisions made before a vehicle reaches the factory, not just what happens once production begins. If India wants 80 million EVs on its roads, it will need vehicles that make sense to the people who will buy and use them. That is where localised product design becomes more than an industrial strategy. It becomes the foundation of electric mobility that can actually scale. The strongest products will not copy what exists elsewhere. They will understand India closely enough to make electric mobility feel practical, dependable and genuinely worth choosing for everyday life today.
