India to require ridesharing services like Uber to electrify 40% of fleet by 2026, report says

India is continuing to step up its efforts toward widespread EV adoption, as the country plans to order ridesharing services to go electric in the coming years, according to a new report.

Popular services such as Uber and Ola will have to convert 40% of their fleets to electric by April 2026, Reuters reports.

The services — referred to as taxi aggregators in the report — would also have to hit benchmarks leading up to that point. Fleets would need to reach 2.5% electrification by 2021, 5% by 2022, and 10% by 2023.

This follows an India government committee’s recent recommendation that most two-wheeled vehicles and all three-wheeled vehicles sold in India must be electric in the coming years.

The country is also looking to require that all motorbikes and scooters sold for commercial purposes are electric by April 2023, and all cars sold for commercial use must be electric from April 2026 onward.

Bold Measures

India has had relatively little success with electrifying its transportation sector thus far. Companies like Ola have tried to boost electric car use, only to be stifled by a lack of infrastructure.

The company isn’t stopping, though — and now it seems that it won’t really have a choice in pursuing electrification. Ola established a dedicated EV unit earlier this year and got $300 million in funding from Hyundai and Kia to build electric cars for the Indian market.

While neighboring China, the only other nation with a higher population, is experiencing an electric car boom, India only saw 3,600 EVs sold in the past year, according to Reuters. That represents a tripling from the past year, but it still only makes up about 0.1% of the total market.

Electrek’s Take

Motorbikes, scooters, ridesharing cars, commercial vehicles…India is looking to cut pollution and its dependency on fossil fuels, and it seems to be unafraid of making big changes in order to get there.

These are bold moves, and they’re the right moves. We’re curious to see how everything plays out in the coming months and years.