Two in three rickshaws sold in India are electric
Electric share of new vehicle sales in India by type, 2025: three-wheelers, two-wheelers and cars. IEA rounded figures.
- 1. India now has more working-age people than China
- 2. India's UPI now handles 86% as many payments as Visa
- 3. Indian students now outnumber Chinese students in the US
- 4. India's GitHub developers outnumber China's, Brazil's and Japan's combined
- 5. India's stock market grew 23-fold since 2000
- 6. Indian phone users now average 25 GB of data monthly
- 7. India's metro network quadrupled in a decade
- 8. India now ships over a third of world rice exports
- 9. India went from 1% to 37% of Russia's crude sales
- 10. India's wild tigers have more than doubled since 2006
- 11. Two in three rickshaws sold in India are electric
- 12. Indians now file more patents at home than Germans
- 13. India published more science papers than Germany and Britain combined
- 14. India now holds more foreign reserves than Saudi Arabia
- 15. Open defecation in India fell from 73% to 7%
Over two-thirds of the three-wheelers sold in India in 2025 were electric, against nearly 4% of cars.
India sold almost five electric three-wheelers for every electric car in 2025. It is the world's biggest market for them.
Electric scooters and motorbikes add almost 1.3 million more. India's switch to electric is running on two and three wheels, not four.
the numbers & method
| Electric share of sales (%) | Electric sales (k) | |
|---|---|---|
| three-wheelers (rickshaws) | 70 | 800 |
| two-wheelers (scooters, motorbikes) | 6 | 1,300 |
| cars | 4 | 165 |
Claim types Fact · Interpretation
All values are as stated in the IEA's text, which rounds them: electric three-wheeler sales rose 15% to 'almost 800,000', 'almost 70%' of three-wheeler sales ('over two-thirds'); electric two-wheeler sales grew 5% to 'less than 1.3 million', 'around 6%' of two-wheeler sales (India is the second-largest electric two-wheeler market after China). Electric car sales rose 75% to 165,000, 'nearly 4%' of car sales (https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2026/trends-in-electric-cars). Chart bars use these rounded figures, so true values are slightly below the bar for 'almost'/'less than' items. 'Almost five per car' is derived (800,000 / 165,000 = 4.8). Three-wheelers include passenger and goods rickshaws. The final sentence of takeaway 3 is an interpretation.
Published 3 Nov 2026
what connects to this
one plate, every morning
The new world, explained in one chart, in your inbox at 7:00, your time. Free.
or follow via rss, the "rss" in progrss