India’s electric vehicle ambitions are colliding headlong with a crisis that no amount of subsidy can paper over. With the government eyeing 30% EV penetration by 2030 and FAME-III committing ₹10,000 crore to accelerate adoption, the uncomfortable truth is that the after-sales ecosystem — the unglamorous backbone of any automotive market — remains dangerously underdeveloped.
Fleets sit idle, consumers grow wary, and skilled technicians are nowhere to be found. Budget 2026 arrives at a pivotal juncture: it can either course-correct this fragile ecosystem with bold, targeted interventions or risk watching India’s clean mobility dream stall not from lack of ambition, but from lack of a spanner and a spare part.
A Servicing Vacuum That Metro India Can Ignore — But 70% of the Country Cannot
The numbers are stark. India currently operates barely 5,000 authorised EV service centres, almost entirely clustered in metropolitan areas, whilst China has already crossed the one-lakh mark. For the 70 per cent of India’s population residing in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, this translates into an after-sales desert — a landscape where high-voltage diagnostics, thermal management checks, and over-the-air software updates are simply unavailable. Olectra‘s fleet of 500-plus electric buses has reportedly endured 45–60 days of downtime awaiting imported chassis frames and battery packs, whilst Tata‘s fleet operators record uptime losses of nearly 30% owing to supply chain disruptions.
Delhi‘s 10,000-odd e-rickshaws limp along on makeshift repairs, with botched battery management system recalibrations creating genuine fire risks. Without national standards for multi-brand workshops, consumers remain captive to OEM monopolies that charge two to three times the equivalent ICE service costs. Budget 2026 must seed at least 50,000 common service stations through viability gap funding — a model not unlike the UDAY scheme that revived discoms — if EV servicing is to reach the heartland.
The Spare Parts Famine Driving Downtime and Distrust
Beneath the servicing gap lies an even more fundamental problem: India simply cannot source EV components quickly or cheaply enough. Lithium-ion cells, which account for roughly 40% of an electric vehicle’s cost, face lead times of six to nine months from suppliers such as LG Chem and CATL, whilst PLI uptake for localised component manufacturing had reached only 20% by 2025. Motors, inverters, and DC-DC converters face parallel bottlenecks, compounded by the compliance burden of IATF 16949 certification that leaves smaller MSMEs struggling to enter the supply chain.
Into this vacuum has stepped a thriving grey market — counterfeit battery packs available at 30% discounts that void warranties and pose safety risks. NITI Aayog has estimated annual losses from EV-related downtime at ₹15,000 crore, urging 50% localisation by 2028. Without dedicated EV scrapyards, circular supply chains, and PLI incentives targeting cobalt recycling and sodium-ion pilots, resale values will continue to crater. Electric two-wheelers currently fetch as little as 20% of ICE equivalents after just two years, a depreciation curve that no rational consumer can ignore.
Skilling Deficits and Insurance Gaps Are Quietly Killing Consumer Confidence
India requires 50,000 EV technicians versed in high-voltage safety protocols and OTA systems by 2027. Annual output from ITIs currently stands at under 5,000. The NSDC‘s ₹100-crore EV skilling fund disburses sluggishly, leaving roughly 70% of garages still oriented entirely towards ICE vehicles. The consequences are measurable: Nagpur alone recorded 200 e-scooter fires in a single year, attributed largely to untrained repairs. Insurance companies, meanwhile, have responded to 150-plus EV blazes in 2025 with premium hikes of 20–30%, driven by actuarial uncertainty around battery life cycles and fire statistics.
The Ather 450X, one of India’s more aspirational electric scooters, loses 25% of its value in year one, partly because no standardised battery health indexing exists to reassure prospective buyers. The policy toolkit to address this is well understood — mandatory battery passports, ARAI certification for aftermarket spares, GST reductions on service labour to 5%, and MoP clarity on vehicle-to-grid inverters — but it requires political will to enact swiftly. V2G-ready modular battery packs could unlock resale premiums of 15%, transforming the economics of second-hand EV ownership overnight.
India’s electric vehicle story is not short of vision, investment, or political commitment. What it lacks is the unglamorous infrastructure of competent technicians, localised spare parts, and service centres within reach of the average Indian buyer. Budget 2026 has the tools and the moment: spare parts PLI, a skilling revolution anchored in ITIs, viability gap funding for Tier-2/3 service hubs, and resale valuation norms backed by battery passports. Ignore the after-sales ecosystem, and the green revolution will sputter to a halt. Fix it, and India’s promise of 1.5 crore jobs and ₹20-lakh crore in clean mobility investment moves from aspiration to achievement.