Featured image credit: Image: Biswarup Ganguly via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0). Source

By Piyush P. Yadav

Delhi does not just subsidise electric vehicles — it has legally mandated that every cab and auto-rickshaw fleet operating through an app in the city go 100 per cent electric, on a fixed schedule, whether or not the operator wants to. Ola, Uber, Rapido and every registered delivery-service aggregator such as Zomato and Swiggy must hit 50 per cent electric four-wheelers within three years of the mandate’s notification and 100 per cent within five years, with three-wheeler autos on an even faster four-year path to full electrification. This runs alongside, and is separate from, Delhi’s newer EV Policy 2.0, notified in July 2026, which layers city-wide purchase subsidies, scrappage incentives and an outright ban on registering new petrol or diesel three-wheelers from 2027 and two-wheelers from 2028 on top of the aggregator-specific rule. Together the two instruments explain why Delhi’s ride-hailing and delivery fleets are electrifying faster than the private-car market around them.

How we worked this out

This explainer is built from two separate, verifiable Delhi government instruments, checked in September 2026: the Delhi Motor Vehicle Aggregator and Delivery Service Provider Scheme, 2023, notified by the Government of NCT of Delhi on 21 November 2023 and reported with its exact percentage targets by JMK Research and Inc42; and Delhi’s Electric Vehicle Policy 2.0, whose draft was opened for public feedback in April 2026 and which multiple outlets, including EV Infrastructure News and Insights on India, confirm was formally notified and took effect on 1 July 2026, running until 31 March 2030. Numbers for both are cross-checked across at least two independent reports rather than taken from a single source.

The aggregator mandate: what Ola, Uber, Rapido and Zomato are actually bound to

The 2023 scheme applies to any entity that operates, on-boards or manages a fleet of vehicles through a digital app to carry passengers or fulfil deliveries — which covers every major ride-hailing and food- or grocery-delivery platform active in Delhi. Its targets, measured from the November 2023 notification date, are specific and staggered by vehicle class:

Fleet category Within 6 months Within 2 – 3 years Full compliance
Four-wheeler cabs (Ola, Uber, Rapido cars) 5% electric 50% electric by year 3 100% electric by year 5 (~November 2028)
Three-wheeler autos 10% electric 50% electric by year 2 100% electric by year 4 (~November 2027)
Two-wheelers (delivery fleets) No new pure-ICE onboarding from 1 January 2026 BS-VI ICE bikes phased out entirely by 31 December 2026

In other words, an Ola or Uber cab fleet in Delhi is legally required to be half-electric by roughly late 2026 and fully electric by late 2028, regardless of what the national PM E-DRIVE subsidy scheme does at the central level. Zomato, Swiggy and Blinkit’s two-wheeler delivery fleets face the tightest near-term deadline of all three categories: they could not add another petrol bike to their Delhi fleet from 1 January 2026 onward, and every BS-VI petrol two-wheeler already in the fleet had to be gone by the end of that year.

What EV Policy 2.0 adds on top, from 1 July 2026

Where the 2023 scheme is a fleet-operator mandate with percentage targets, EV Policy 2.0 is the broader city-wide instrument that makes non-compliance progressively harder to work around, because it phases out ICE vehicle registration for everyone, not just aggregators:

  • 1 January 2027: Delhi’s RTOs stop registering new petrol, diesel or CNG three-wheelers and N1-category goods vehicles altogether — a private operator can no longer sidestep the aggregator mandate by buying a fresh CNG auto and running it independently.
  • 1 April 2028: the same registration freeze extends to two-wheelers, closing the loop on the delivery-fleet segment.
  • Purchase incentives run on a declining three-year schedule: two-wheelers priced up to Rs 2.25 lakh get Rs 10,000 per kWh of battery capacity in year one (capped at Rs 30,000), falling to Rs 6,600/kWh (capped Rs 20,000) in year two and Rs 3,300/kWh (capped Rs 10,000) in year three; auto-rickshaws get flat incentives of Rs 50,000, Rs 40,000 and Rs 30,000 across the same three years; N1 goods carriers get Rs 1,00,000, Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000.
  • Scrappage incentives reward trading in an old BS-IV-or-older Delhi-registered vehicle for a new EV: Rs 10,000 for two-wheelers, Rs 25,000 for three-wheelers, Rs 50,000 for N1 goods carriers, and Rs 1,00,000 for cars priced up to Rs 30 lakh — though the car-scrappage incentive is capped at the first 1,00,000 applicants.
  • Road tax and registration fee waiver: a full 100 per cent waiver on EVs priced up to Rs 30 lakh, and a 50 per cent waiver on strong hybrids in the same price bracket, running until 31 March 2030.
  • Institutional fleets, including school buses, must hit 10 per cent electric by the end of year two, 20 per cent by year three, and 30 per cent by 31 March 2030 — a softer, longer-dated target than the commercial aggregator mandate.

This is a genuinely different instrument from the state purchase subsidies most other Indian states run, which are voluntary incentives with no compulsion attached. Delhi is the only state to combine a binding percentage mandate on commercial fleets with a hard registration ban on new ICE vehicles for the categories aggregators use most — three-wheelers and two-wheelers.

Why Delhi did this instead of relying on subsidies alone

The policy’s own stated diagnosis, echoed across multiple analyses of the draft, was that voluntary incentives had not moved the needle fast enough on Delhi’s most polluting and highest-mileage vehicle segments — a single app-based cab or delivery two-wheeler covers far more kilometres per year, and therefore emits far more, than an equivalent private vehicle. Mandating the switch for high-mileage commercial fleets first, rather than waiting for private buyers to be persuaded by subsidies and GST differentials, was judged the faster route to air-quality gains given Delhi’s pollution emergency. It is also administratively simpler to enforce against a handful of large, licensed aggregator companies than against millions of individual vehicle owners, which is why the aggregator scheme predates the city-wide EV Policy 2.0 by nearly three years.

What this means if you drive for, or run, an aggregator fleet in Delhi

If you are a Delhi-based Ola, Uber or Rapido driver-partner still running a petrol or CNG car, your platform is under a binding obligation to shrink your segment of the fleet on the timeline above; expect onboarding preference, incentives, or eventual exclusion to follow the aggregator’s own compliance pressure well before the 2028 citywide registration ban would otherwise force the issue. If you run a small delivery fleet for Zomato, Swiggy, Blinkit or a courier service, the two-wheeler onboarding freeze from January 2026 already applies to you directly, independent of anything in EV Policy 2.0. And if you are simply a private buyer watching Delhi’s incentive numbers, treat EV Policy 2.0’s purchase subsidy and road tax waiver as a separate, smaller benefit from the aggregator mandate driving most of the fleet conversion you will actually see on Delhi’s roads over the next two years.

Who this does not apply to

Neither instrument reaches outside Delhi’s own registration and licensing jurisdiction — an aggregator’s fleet registered in Gurugram, Noida or Ghaziabad and merely operating trips into Delhi is not bound by either scheme, which is one reason cross-border NCR fleet composition still lags the city proper. Private vehicle owners who never register with an aggregator platform are also outside the mandate entirely; for them, only EV Policy 2.0’s registration-ban dates (2027 for three-wheelers, 2028 for two-wheelers) and its subsidy and tax-waiver provisions are relevant, on the same terms as any other state incentive scheme.

Sources & Further Reading

People also ask

Do Ola and Uber have to switch to electric cars in Delhi?

Yes. Under the Delhi Motor Vehicle Aggregator and Delivery Service Provider Scheme, 2023, four-wheeler fleets used by app-based aggregators must reach 50 per cent electric within three years of the scheme’s notification and 100 per cent within five years, putting full compliance at around November 2028.

What is Delhi’s EV Policy 2.0 and when did it take effect?

Delhi EV Policy 2.0 is the city’s updated electric vehicle policy, notified and effective from 1 July 2026, running until 31 March 2030. It sets purchase subsidies for two-wheelers, three-wheelers and goods vehicles, scrappage incentives, a 100 per cent road tax waiver on EVs up to Rs 30 lakh, and phased bans on registering new ICE three-wheelers from 2027 and two-wheelers from 2028.

Can delivery companies like Zomato and Swiggy still use petrol bikes in Delhi?

Existing BS-VI petrol two-wheelers already in a delivery fleet were required to be phased out entirely by 31 December 2026, and no new pure-ICE two-wheelers could be onboarded into an aggregator or delivery fleet from 1 January 2026 onward, under the 2023 aggregator scheme.

Is Delhi’s aggregator EV mandate the same as PM E-DRIVE?

No. PM E-DRIVE is a central government subsidy scheme that reduces the purchase price of an EV anywhere in India through a point-of-sale incentive. Delhi’s aggregator mandate is a state-level, legally binding requirement on ride-hailing and delivery companies to convert a fixed percentage of their fleet to electric vehicles by specific dates, independent of any central subsidy.

When will new petrol autos and two-wheelers stop being registered in Delhi?

Under EV Policy 2.0, Delhi’s transport department will stop registering new petrol, diesel or CNG three-wheelers and N1-category goods vehicles from 1 January 2027, and will extend the same registration freeze to two-wheelers from 1 April 2028.