How much of India’s shift to ‘alternative fuels’ is electric vehicles?

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Electric vehicle charging centre at Cubbon Park in Bengaluru on Tuesday 03 September 2024. | Photo Credit: The Hindu

August 2026 marked a notable milestone in India’s journey towards a shift from fossil-fuel run vehicles to Electric Vehicles (EVs), as the data from the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations’ (FADA) showed that it was a period of a “historic fuel crossover”.

In the passenger vehicles category that mainly includes cars, FA-DA data showed that, for the first time, the share of new vehicles in the alternative fuels category (41.95%) overtook the share of petrol vehicles (40.85%). FADA’S statement said that alternative fuels included “CNG, hybrid and electric combined”.

Without doubt, India has made considerable progress in moving away from fossil fuels and adapting EVs. As the chart below shows, petrol and diesel still dominate the market by a huge margin, accounting for 83.5% of all the roughly 82 lakh vehicles registered from January to March this year. But this is a sharp 11.5 percentage points drop from the same period in 2021, when petrol and diesel accounted for over 95% of all the 57 lakh vehicles registered then.

The sale of EVs has seen a sharp increase, accounting for 10.6% of total registrations, as this chart shows. 

However, a granular analysis of sub-categories under the alternative fuels based on data accessed from the Vahan portal showed that this was driven more by EV adoption in the two-wheeler and three-wheeler categories. When it came to cars, the growth under the alternative fuels is more pronounced in vehicles that use CNG and LPG, which are fossil fuels with significantly lower emissions, than EVs.

The two-wheeler segment which accounts for over 70% of all the new vehicles registered in the country had shown signs that EV adoption is gaining pace. After registering a marginal increase year-on-year, the share of EVs in two-wheelers has made a jump from 6.4% in 2025 to 9.1% in 2026 (till August). See the chart below.

This is also the first time the share of two-wheelers running on petrol has come down to the 90% mark. This jump in the sale of EV two-wheelers has contributed significantly to the overall share of petrol and diesel vehicles, across all categories, coming down well below the 85% mark this year as shown in the earlier chart. 

If there is one segment that has made a rapid transition away from petrol and diesel, it is the three-wheeler category. They, however, account for only 4% of all the vehicles sold. Of the roughly 9.8 lakh three-wheelers registered till August this year, 60.5% have been EVs. 

The share of petrol and diesel in the registration of three-wheelers has halved from nearly 30% in 2021 to less than 15% in 2026. Interestingly, the share of three-wheelers using CNG or LPG has also come down this year.

It is in the cars segment, which accounts for the second biggest share in total registration of vehicles after two-wheel-ers, that the picture is more nuanced than what the shift indicates when “alternative fuels” are clubbed together. 

As the chart below shows, a remarkable drop is seen in the share of petrol and diesel cars from 86% in 2021 to 61.6% 2026. However, this decline is because there are more hybrid cars that run on petrol with CNG or LNG than EVs. 

There is certainly progress in the sale of EVs, but it is much slower when compared to vehicles using CNG or LPG. The share of hybrid EVs has remained fairly constant since 2023 at around eight per cent. The data indicates the need for further interventions through measures such as the ramping up of charging infrastructure, which can help accelerate the pace of EV adoption among cars as well.

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