Explore the hidden crisis in India's EV transition. Why unregistered, low-speed electric scooters relying on cheap imports threaten consumer trust and safety.
Minaketan Mishra
Millions of Indians want affordable electric mobility. But the cheapest electric two-wheelers entering the market are increasingly tied to Chinese components, fragmented assembly and a regulatory category that is difficult to monitor. If India gets this market wrong, the problem won't just be poor scooters — it could be a loss of trust in EVs themselves.
India's electric-vehicle story is usually told through a handful of familiar names: TVS, Bajaj, Ather, Hero and Ola.
In 2025, India's electric two-wheeler market reached roughly 1.3 million units, making the country the world's second-largest electric two-wheeler market after China. That number may not capture the entire picture. Industry consultancy InsightEV estimated that low-speed electric scooters alone sold about 1.3 million units in 2025, after growing more than 200% in a year. These vehicles generally sit outside the normal registration system, so the two figures are not directly comparable — but together they reveal how large the inexpensive end of India's EV market may have become. (The Times of India)
And this is where India's EV story gets uncomfortable.
Because while Indian manufacturers are competing to build smarter, faster and more sophisticated electric scooters, another market is growing around a much simpler proposition:
Give me an electric two-wheeler I can afford.
Some of these scooters sell for around ₹40,000–50,000 — far below mainstream electric scooters. Industry reporting has linked much of this segment to inexpensive Chinese components and knock-down kits assembled through fragmented Indian supply chains. (LinkedIn)
For a country where the two-wheeler is often the first major vehicle a household buys, that affordability matters enormously.
But India now has to answer a harder question:
What happens when the cheapest EV market grows faster than the system designed to regulate, monitor and support it?
There is a tendency to compare a ₹45,000 low-speed electric scooter with a ₹1 lakh-plus mainstream electric scooter and conclude that the cheaper product is simply inferior. That misses the customer entirely.
A consumer in a small town may not need a 100-km/h scooter, a large touchscreen or a sophisticated connected ecosystem. They may need to travel 15 or 20 kilometres to work, the market or a nearby town. For that customer, the difference between ₹45,000 and ₹1 lakh is not a feature comparison — it is a question of whether they can participate in the EV transition at all.
That is why the low-speed segment has found demand among small-town consumers, first-time buyers and commercial users. Research from Intage India also points to a distinct rural use case for inexpensive, low-speed EVs, although its specific urban-rural split was based on industry interviews rather than a nationally representative survey. (High Volume Transport)
The demand is not irrational.
In fact, it exposes something important about India's EV transition.
The mass market may not be waiting for the EV that manufacturers want to sell. It is waiting for the EV it can afford.
And China already has a supply chain built precisely around that price point.
The Chinese advantage here is not necessarily superior EV technology. China has something more important for this particular market: scale.
The country has developed an enormous ecosystem of motors, controllers, batteries, chargers, electronics and other electric two-wheeler components. That allows a company importing knock-down kits to assemble a relatively simple vehicle without recreating the entire supply chain domestically.
The economics are compelling. Industry reporting has put some Chinese CKD kits at around ₹15,000, with the battery taking the cost to roughly ₹25,000 before the vehicle is assembled and sold in India. Finished low-speed scooters can then reach consumers at around ₹40,000–50,000. (LinkedIn)
This is the uncomfortable part of India's manufacturing story. India has been trying to build a domestic EV ecosystem, but the cheapest part of the market is precisely where Chinese supply-chain depth can be hardest to compete with.
The result is a peculiar form of localisation. The vehicle may be assembled in India. The dealer may be Indian. The brand may be Indian. But critical components can still originate in China.
That does not automatically make the product bad — or the manufacturing fake. But it raises a question India should be asking much more aggressively:
How much value is actually being created in India when an affordable EV is assembled from imported components?
There is a reason this market can operate so differently from conventional scooters.
Under India's Central Motor Vehicles Rules, qualifying two-wheeled battery-operated vehicles can be excluded from the normal definition of a motor vehicle if they meet conditions including a motor power below 0.25 kW, maximum speed below 25 km/h, and a weight excluding the battery of no more than 60 kg, along with specified safety requirements and verification. (ETAuto.com)
The logic was straightforward. If a vehicle is tiny, slow and intended for short-distance mobility, why impose the entire regulatory burden of a motorcycle on it? The exemption helped create space for affordable electric mobility.
But the market has changed. And now the same exemption creates a visibility problem.
A qualifying vehicle does not pass through the same registration system as a conventional motorcycle. That means the government has less conventional registration data telling it how many are operating, where they are operating and who is responsible for them.
This is particularly important when the segment is potentially reaching millions of units. A policy designed for a niche category is now sitting underneath a mass-market phenomenon.
This is not merely a theoretical regulatory concern.
In 2022, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways warned states about manufacturers and dealers allegedly selling electric two-wheelers capable of 40–55 km/h while treating them as exempt low-speed vehicles. The ministry said such vehicles were being supplied without the type approval, insurance and vehicle identification applicable to higher-speed motor vehicles. (Moneycontrol)
That does not mean every low-speed electric scooter is being sold illegally. But it demonstrates why the category needs enforcement.
If a vehicle is genuinely limited to 25 km/h, the regulatory argument is one thing. If a substantially faster vehicle is being sold under the same exemption, the consequences are very different.
And this is where India's cheap EV problem begins to become bigger than price. Because when a market is large, fragmented and difficult to monitor, bad actors can hide inside the same category as legitimate manufacturers.
Suppose a consumer buys a ₹45,000 electric scooter. For the first year, everything works. Then the controller fails. Or the charger stops working. Or the battery-management system develops a fault. Or a battery pack needs replacement.
The consumer goes back to the dealer. But what happens if the dealer has stopped selling the brand? What if the Indian assembler has changed suppliers? What if the particular controller is no longer imported? What if the Chinese component manufacturer has discontinued it?
This is where the economics of ultra-cheap EVs become uncomfortable. A low-priced vehicle has limited room to support an expensive nationwide service network, technician training, spare-parts inventory and long warranty obligations.
Industry executives have already raised concerns about limited warranties and weak after-sales support in the low-speed segment, warning that product quality and shelf life could become problems as the market expands. (LinkedIn)
And that is a much more useful way to discuss Chinese EV quality. The issue is not that Chinese engineering is inherently poor — China produces extremely sophisticated electric vehicles. The question is whether a fragmented low-cost supply chain can provide accountability for a ₹40,000 vehicle over five or seven years.
That is a different problem. And potentially a much bigger one.
The cheapest vehicle is not necessarily the cheapest vehicle to own.
If a ₹45,000 scooter lasts five years with inexpensive maintenance, it may be an excellent purchase. If a ₹45,000 scooter requires a major battery replacement after two years and the manufacturer cannot provide the part, the economics change completely.
This is where India currently has an information problem. Consumers can compare price, range, speed and features. It is much harder to compare battery longevity, component availability, warranty enforcement and expected ownership life. The low-speed market's fragmented nature makes that even harder.
And there is another issue: financing and insurance. Because qualifying low-speed vehicles sit outside the normal registration framework, conventional financing and insurance mechanisms can be less straightforward. Industry reporting has highlighted this as one of the barriers affecting the segment. (LinkedIn)
So the cheapest EV can simultaneously be cheaper to buy, harder to finance, harder to insure and potentially harder to repair. That is not necessarily a reason to ban it. It is a reason to regulate the ecosystem around it better.
There is an even deeper problem.
India's EV industrial policy is largely designed around building competitive domestic manufacturers and encouraging localisation. That makes sense. But according to a 2026 report from the Centre for Domestic Economy Policy Research, the structure of the Auto PLI scheme may have unintentionally left low-speed electric two-wheelers at a disadvantage.
The report argues that PLI-supported manufacturers have generally focused on higher-value products, while the low-speed segment is less attractive because margins are lower. It concludes that the segment remains heavily dependent on imported kits and components, particularly from China.
If that assessment is correct, India has created a strange policy outcome. The government is subsidising the development of an advanced domestic EV industry while the cheapest end of the market is being left open to imports.
The problem is not that Indian companies are refusing to build cheap scooters. The problem is that the economics may not encourage them to. And that matters because the cheapest segment may be exactly where EV adoption can spread fastest among lower-income consumers.
India's EV transition is often discussed through metropolitan cities. But the ₹50,000 EV market points somewhere else entirely.
A rural household does not necessarily need a premium electric scooter. It needs mobility. A small electric vehicle can be useful for short trips to a market, school, workplace or nearby town. It can be attractive to delivery workers and small businesses. It can also eliminate petrol expenditure for households that already have access to electricity.
That means this market could become one of the most important routes through which electrification reaches beyond India's wealthier urban consumers. And that is precisely why India cannot afford to treat it as a disposable fringe market.
If the cheapest EVs work well, they could accelerate electrification. If they fail badly and repeatedly, they could create something much harder to reverse: consumer distrust.
This is where the argument needs to be precise.
China is not the problem. Cheap products are not the problem. Imports are not automatically the problem either. India itself depends on global supply chains for many technologies, including components used in sophisticated EVs.
The real problem is cheap electric mobility without sufficient accountability.
Because consumers do not always distinguish between vehicle categories. Someone who buys a poorly supported low-speed scooter may not say: "The Chinese component ecosystem and Indian low-speed regulatory framework failed me." They may simply say: "EVs are unreliable."
That distinction matters enormously. India's mainstream electric two-wheeler industry is still trying to build consumer confidence. If a large, poorly regulated parallel market develops a reputation for unreliable batteries, disappearing dealers and unavailable parts, the reputational damage can spread far beyond the companies actually selling those products.
The people building good EVs could end up paying for the people building bad ones.
There is a simple but dangerous temptation in stories about Chinese imports: ban them.
But that would miss the underlying problem. India needs affordable electric mobility. The demand is real. If Chinese components are currently the cheapest way to produce a reliable low-cost vehicle, shutting them out without building a competitive domestic alternative could simply make affordable EVs more expensive without making them better.
The better response is to make the market more accountable. India could strengthen enforcement of the existing low-speed limits, improve traceability of manufacturers and assemblers, establish clearer minimum safety and battery requirements, require meaningful after-sales responsibility and make it easier for consumers to identify who actually manufactured the vehicle and its critical components.
It should also improve market data. If millions of electric two-wheelers are operating outside conventional registration databases, policymakers need another way to understand the scale and behaviour of that market. Because you cannot regulate a market you cannot properly see.
India's electric-vehicle race is usually portrayed as a competition to build the best scooter. That may not be the most important competition.
The bigger question is: who can build the cheapest electric two-wheeler that is still safe, reliable and repairable?
China has already demonstrated that it can build incredibly low-cost electric hardware at enormous scale. India has demonstrated that it can build a sophisticated domestic EV industry. What India has not fully solved is the space between those two worlds. And that space matters.
Because the next wave of EV adoption may not come from consumers upgrading to a ₹1.5 lakh premium scooter. It may come from a farmer buying a ₹45,000 electric vehicle. A delivery worker buying one to reduce fuel costs. A student buying one because it is the first vehicle they can afford. A small-town family buying one because ₹50,000 is possible while ₹1 lakh is not.
That is the EV market India needs to win.
But winning it does not mean making the cheapest possible scooter. It means making the cheapest dependable scooter.
India should therefore not ask whether Chinese EVs are cheap. It should ask a harder question:
Because if India fails to answer that question now, the problem will not remain confined to a few bad scooters.
It could become a trust problem for India's entire electric-mobility transition.
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