By Piyush P. Yadav

India sold about 800 heavy-duty electric trucks in 2025. That number, cited by NITI Aayog member Rajiv Gauba as he opened the fifth e-FAST India Summit in New Delhi on Monday, 7 September 2026, is the reason the government’s think tank has stopped talking about subsidies for electric freight and started building marketplaces for it. Gauba launched two platforms at the summit: the Platform for Aggregating Clean Transport, or PACT, which pools freight demand along specific corridors so that truck makers, financiers and charging operators can see a pipeline before they invest, and the Zero Emission Truck Marketplace, which puts manufacturers, logistics companies, charge point operators, lenders and technology providers on a single platform to find each other and structure deals. This report explains what each platform does, what problem it is designed to solve, how it sits alongside the Rs 9,852 crore heavy-duty scheme the Ministry of Heavy Industries is preparing, and what fleet operators should do with it.

Why 800 trucks is the number that matters

Heavy trucks are 3 to 4 per cent of India’s vehicle fleet and produce more than a third of its transport-sector carbon emissions, because about 70 per cent of the country’s freight moves by road. Electrifying them is therefore the single largest lever in transport decarbonisation, and it is the one where India has made least progress. NITI Aayog’s own figures show electric freight vehicle deployments rising from 201 in FY2025 to 826 in FY2026, a fourfold increase from a very low base, with a little over 3,000 electric medium and heavy trucks now operating in the country. We tracked the 2025 registration data in our report on why India’s electric truck market has not really started; the difference between that article’s 573 and Gauba’s 800 comes down to which weight classes are counted, and neither number is large against a diesel truck market of several lakh units a year.

Indicator Figure Source
Heavy-duty electric trucks sold, 2025 About 800 Rajiv Gauba, NITI Aayog, 7 September 2026
Electric freight vehicles deployed, FY2025 201 NITI Aayog
Electric freight vehicles deployed, FY2026 826 NITI Aayog
Electric medium and heavy trucks operating Over 3,000 NITI Aayog
Heavy trucks as share of fleet 3 to 4 per cent NITI Aayog
Heavy trucks’ share of transport emissions Over one-third NITI Aayog
Freight moved by road About 70 per cent NITI Aayog

What PACT does

PACT is a demand-aggregation platform. Its premise is that the reason no manufacturer builds a 500-truck order book and no operator builds a corridor of megawatt chargers is that neither can see the other’s commitment. A cement company that wants to electrify its Nagpur-to-Hyderabad haulage, a port operator with fixed-route container movements and a third-party logistics firm running an e-commerce corridor each represent a fraction of the demand needed to justify a charging depot at a specific point on a specific highway. PACT collects those commitments corridor by corridor, so that a truck maker can plan production, a lender can size a facility and a charge point operator can site chargers against a visible pipeline rather than a forecast.

The participants are shippers, logistics providers, truck manufacturers, financiers and charging operators. The output is visibility: which corridors have enough committed volume to be electrified, and in what sequence. Gauba described the next phase of India’s electric transition as one that “would require greater focus on demand aggregation, innovative financing and coordinated corridor planning,” and PACT is the demand-aggregation piece of that sentence.

What the ZET Marketplace does

The Zero Emission Truck Marketplace is the matchmaking layer. Where PACT aggregates demand, the marketplace connects the supply side to it: electric truck manufacturers can showcase products, logistics firms can identify which trucks fit which routes, charge point operators can find fleets to anchor a site, financiers can find bankable deployments and technology providers, from telematics to battery-health monitoring, can attach themselves to specific projects. NITI Aayog’s description of it as a place to “identify commercial opportunities and develop partnerships around zero-emission freight projects” is a fair summary; it is closer to a structured tender board than a shopping site.

PACT ZET Marketplace
Full name Platform for Aggregating Clean Transport Zero Emission Truck Marketplace
Problem addressed Fragmented demand; no visible pipeline for corridors Buyers, sellers, lenders and charging operators cannot find each other
Who joins Shippers, logistics firms, truck makers, financiers, charge point operators Truck makers, logistics firms, charge point operators, financiers, technology providers
Output Corridor-level demand visibility and sequencing Deals, partnerships and product-to-route matching
Launched by Rajiv Gauba, NITI Aayog, at the fifth e-FAST India Summit, 7 September 2026

The three barriers, and which platform hits which

NITI Aayog’s summit material lists the structural constraints on electric trucks in four words: fragmented demand, high financing costs, inadequate charging and battery uncertainty affecting residual values. PACT addresses the first directly and the third indirectly, since corridor demand is what justifies corridor charging. The marketplace addresses the second by putting lenders in the same room as bankable projects. The fourth, battery residual value, was the subject of the most interesting remarks of the day, from Ministry of Road Transport and Highways Secretary V. Umashankar, who said greater transparency around battery health could address financing concerns and improve resale values. That is a regulatory question rather than a platform one, and we have examined it separately in our report on India’s missing battery-health standard.

On financing, Gauba was specific: the capital cost of an electric truck needs to come down to diesel levels, and the tools are “blended finance mechanisms, leasing models and stronger data systems.” An electric heavy truck costs two to three times its diesel equivalent upfront, and while the per-kilometre running cost is lower, the gap is only recovered over a life that lenders cannot yet price because they do not know what the truck will be worth in year five. Leasing moves that risk from the operator to a lessor who can pool it across a fleet; blended finance puts a public or philanthropic first-loss tranche under the commercial lender; data systems, including battery-health telemetry, shrink the uncertainty everyone is pricing.

How it fits with the Rs 9,852 crore scheme

The platforms are not a subsidy and do not replace one. A week before the summit, on 1 September, Ministry of Heavy Industries Additional Secretary Hanif Qureshi set out the proposed heavy-duty scheme at the India Clean Transportation Summit: about Rs 9,852 crore to support roughly 50,000 electric buses and 50,000 electric trucks, with a credit guarantee component aimed precisely at the financing gap. We detailed it in our report on the proposed heavy-duty EV scheme. The scheme provides the money and the guarantee; PACT and the marketplace are meant to make sure that when the money arrives there is a corridor, a truck and a charger ready to use it. The sequencing is deliberate: demand aggregation first, so that the scheme funds deployments that are already structured rather than creating a rush of unconnected orders.

The other existing instruments referenced at the summit were the PLI schemes for automobiles and cells, PM E-DRIVE, PM e-Bus Sewa and the PARIVARTAN scheme. Electric buses, which have their own demand-aggregation model in the gross cost contract, are the proof that aggregation works: we explained in our guide to how electric bus contracts work that pooled state tenders brought per-kilometre costs down to a level at which diesel buses are no longer competitive. PACT is an attempt to do for freight, where the buyers are private and fragmented, what CESL’s tenders did for buses, where the buyer is the state.

What fleet operators should do

  • Register corridor demand on PACT. The platform only works if operators declare routes and volumes. An operator with a fixed 300 km round trip on a single highway is exactly the profile PACT is looking for, and being on the list early is how a corridor gets chargers before its rivals’ corridors do.
  • Use the marketplace to compare trucks by route, not by brochure. Our guide to every electric truck on sale in India lists the models by weight class; the marketplace is where those models meet actual duty cycles and charging availability.
  • Structure the deal as a lease if the balance sheet allows. Gauba named leasing as one of the three financing tools. A lease with a residual-value guarantee from the manufacturer is the closest thing to diesel-equivalent economics available today.
  • Instrument the battery. Whatever standard MoRTH eventually sets, fleets that have logged battery-health data from day one will refinance and resell on better terms than those that have not.

The scale of what is being attempted

Electric three-wheelers reached 55 per cent of new L5 autos in August, as we reported in our August three-wheeler analysis, because the economics were obvious to a driver with a Rs 3 lakh vehicle and a 100 km day. Heavy trucks are the opposite case: a Rs 1 crore-plus vehicle, a 500 km day, a fragmented buyer base and no corridor charging. Nobody at the summit suggested the platforms would move the 2026 number much. What they are designed to do is make sure that the 50,000-truck scheme, when it is notified, has somewhere to land.

Sources & Further Reading

Frequently asked questions

What is PACT?

The Platform for Aggregating Clean Transport, launched by NITI Aayog on 7 September 2026. It pools freight demand from shippers and logistics firms corridor by corridor so that truck makers, lenders and charging operators can invest against a visible pipeline.

What is the ZET Marketplace?

The Zero Emission Truck Marketplace, launched alongside PACT. It connects electric truck manufacturers, logistics companies, charge point operators, financiers and technology providers so they can showcase products, identify opportunities and form partnerships.

How many electric trucks does India have?

About 800 heavy-duty electric trucks were sold in 2025, and a little over 3,000 electric medium and heavy trucks are operating in total. Electric freight deployments rose from 201 in FY2025 to 826 in FY2026.

Is there a subsidy for electric trucks?

Not yet at scale. The Ministry of Heavy Industries has proposed a scheme of about Rs 9,852 crore for roughly 50,000 electric buses and 50,000 electric trucks with a credit guarantee, but it had not been notified as of September 2026. PACT and the marketplace are meant to prepare corridors and deals for when it is.