The ministry is now considering adding incentives for charging infrastructure, as operators either have to buy chargers for their depots or tie up with charge point operators to keep their vehicles running and maximize revenue, the people cited above said.

“With e-bus and e-truck demand set to rise, the demand for fast chargers will also increase, and the ministry is considering providing some incentives for charging infrastructure under the new e-bus and e-truck financing scheme,” said one of the people cited above, a senior government official.

Queries emailed to the heavy industries ministry on 27 August seeking comment remained unanswered until press time.

The need for high-powered charging infrastructure is becoming more pressing as electric commercial-vehicle sales grow. India, the world’s third-largest e-bus market, according to the International Energy Agency, saw e-bus sales rise 81% to 3,644 units in fiscal year 2024 (FY24). Sales then fell 6% to 3,314 units in FY25 before rebounding 37% to 5,356 units in FY26, according to the road transport and highways ministry’s Vahan registry.

The government’s 2024 PM E-Drive scheme was the country’s first to support e-truck sales, with a ₹500 crore budget for subsidies through FY28 and a target of 5,643 e-trucks. Yet only 52 e-trucks had received incentives as of 24 August, according to the scheme’s dashboard.

The low uptake was due to a shortage of heavy electric trucks that complied with the scheme’s localization requirements, as well as challenges in procuring scrapping certificates for older diesel trucks that would be replaced with electric models, according to industry experts.

The new financing scheme for electric commercial vehicles may also include incentives for setting up allied charging infrastructure, said the second person cited above, an electric-vehicles (EV) industry executive.

India has 67,657 public EV chargers, according to data compiled by state-run Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (Bhel), which is also the nodal agency for EV charging subsidies under PM E-Drive. But the network has very limited high-capacity charging infrastructure: only 534 chargers, or 0.7%, have a capacity of 121-240 kilowatts, while just nine, or 0.01%, have a capacity above 240kW, according to Bhel’s dashboard.

High-capacity chargers above 120kW are crucial for rapid charging of electric buses and trucks, as slower chargers would increase the downtime of these expensive assets, according to the second person cited above.

The proposed charging support would build on the ₹2,000 crore charging-infrastructure subsidy under PM E-Drive, launched in 2024. Under the scheme guidelines, the heavy industries ministry planned to support the installation of 72,000 EV chargers across vehicle segments through the subsidy, with the funds to be channelled through state government agencies.

However, an August Rajya Sabha parliamentary committee report said the ministry had sanctioned ₹689 crore in subsidies for setting up 6,562 chargers.

The proposed bundled financing support would therefore seek to address both sides of the commercial-EV equation: the high upfront cost of the vehicle and the capital required to build the charging infrastructure needed to operate it.

“It is important to understand that investments made for setting up chargers for e-buses and e-trucks are large and capex-heavy. So, bundled benefits—charging infrastructure benefits stitched together with vehicle procurement incentives—can assist the EV ecosystem in faster growth and adoption. The benefits of government spending, in the form of subsidies in various schemes, are in the form of reduced air pollution and falling crude oil import reliance, which can be seen only when the EV ecosystem grows,” said Sharif Qamar, associate director of transport and urban governance at New Delhi-based think tank The Energy and Resources Institute.