A technical trial focused on the commercialisation of electric trucks started on the previous World EV Day 2024 from Chennai has now reached its rollout milestone with an impressive outcome of 1000 electric trucks to be deployed at various freight routes of India.
India’s premier tech piloting agency, Ease of Doing Business, after commercially prototyping electric cars and buses on the Delhi-Agra (2020) and Delhi-Jaipur (2022) electric highways under the Indian Government electric mobility initiative — National Highways for Electric Vehicles (NHEV) — initiated commercial prototyping of electric trucks third technical trial in participation with Transvolt Mobility on World EV Day last year brought together all stakeholders necessary to accelerate deployment, including those willing to take the challenge of policy making for incentivising, accelerating and overall financing.
On 1st August 2025, the final piece of this puzzle was introduced as a financing instrument worth Rs 500 crores, which was opened to collect expressions of interest from stakeholders seeking blended climate financing for electric truck deployment. In an official statement issued by Ease of Doing Business during the launch of this instrument last month, it was projected to finance the deployment of a maximum of 720 to 810 electric trucks under a credit outlay of ?500 Crores to meet Viability Gap Funding.
However, today, while closing the single window for availing blended climate financing from this instrument, National Highways for EV (NHEV) and Transvolt Mobility, a leading electric truck fleet operator, revealed that a total deployment of 1,000 trucks resulted from this year-long exercise, which also included confidence and affirmation from all stakeholders through piloting, financing and commercial prototyping.
“Electric trucks have historically been major carbon emitters in surface transport. PM E-DRIVE has now brought electric trucks under its incentive coverage. The scale and speed of private capital deployment in NHEV confirm that the policy trajectory is headed in the right direction. The overwhelming response from various Zero Emission Trucking (ZET) stakeholders is encouraging. Recent Public-Private Partnership (PPP) deployments, such as the $ 57 million USD Viability Gap Funding (VGF) in ‘NHEV’ and the $20 million USD equity investment from IFC in ‘Transvolt Mobility’, are expected to further accelerate nationwide adoption of electric Heavy Duty Vehicles (HDVs) and the transition of surface transport to clean, cutting-edge, zero-emission solutions, ” said Sudhendu J. Sinha, Advisor, NITI Aayog, Government of India.