E-taxi! E-taxi! Why India has a longer wait for electric cabs

Growth stalled by tepid demand and high prices driven by imported batteries, parts

- Rohini Mohan

BENGALURU - Investment banker Harsha Rao has never been ghosted by a woman like he has been by Bengaluru's taxi drivers, infamous for last-minute cancellations.

"It is harder to find a cab than to find love," the 36-year-old said.

Things are looking up since he switched to BluSmart, a fully electric taxi aggregator able to guarantee an on-time "cancellation-free" premium service because it owns the fleet and employs drivers.

His joy, unfortunately, might be short-lived, as the expansion of electric taxi fleets comes under strain. An anticipated dip in the prices of electric vehicles (EVs), arising from economies of scale as adoption speeds up, never materialised.

Today, electric taxi companies like BluSmart, Shoffr and SnapE, which cater to environmentally conscious and upwardly mobile Indians desiring reliable services like Mr Rao, have hit a roadblock.

Gurugram-based BluSmart is South Asia's biggest e-taxi service. But its 8,500 EVs on Delhi and Bengaluru roads are a far cry from an initial target of 100,000 by 2025.

"We just could not get cars at the rate we wanted," Mr Anirudh Arun, BluSmart's chief executive in charge of fleet and business, told The Straits Times.

In October 2023, electric cars made up 2.1 per cent of all cars sold in India. A year later, that number is at a dismal 2.2 per cent, according to the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (Fada).

Tepid demand from private buyers and stubbornly high prices driven by imported batteries and components have stalled the growth of EVs. India, the third-largest car market in the world, is also banking on the electrification of transport to decarbonise the economy and tackle air pollution.

Experts said the only way out of the impasse is to have more EVs in the market, both Indian-made and imported, until domestic production catches up.