India Is The Largest Market For Electric 3-Wheelers, Says IEA

Continuing with its trend for the second year in a row, India becomes the  world's largest market for electric three-wheelers, with its sales rose nearly 20% to reach about 700,000 vehicles in 2024. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has revealed in a recent report.

The Paris-based energy watchdog has said in its Global EV Outlook 2025, that  India continues to drive most growth in the global electric three-wheeler market.

This trend continues when the global three-wheeler market is shrinking 5% from the previous year. In India electric 3 wheelers’ sales grew more than 10% surpassing 1 million vehicles in 2024. Electric 3 Wheelers  sales represented almost one-quarter of all 3W sales, up from a-fifth in 2023, the IEA said.

Notably, the electric 3 W market appears  highly concentrated in China and India. These two countries combined account for more than 90% of electric and conventional 3W sales.

However, China has seen stagnation. On this, the IEA was reported in media to have  said, "Electrification of 3Ws in China has stagnated at less than 15% over the past three years. In 2023, India overtook China to become the world's largest market for electric 3Ws, and it maintained this position in 2024, with sales growing close to 20% year-on-year to reach nearly 700,000 vehicles," 

This implies that the figure got translated into a record 57% electric sales share in 2024, which is a  3% increase from the previous year.

IEA estimates that this growing trend is likely to continue.  The policy support of government of India has usurped this growth, it said. Notably, the new PM E-DRIVE scheme allocated budget in 2024 supporting  the roll-out of more than 300,000 electric 3Ws for commercial use. 

IEA said that China, India and Southeast Asia are  the world's largest 2/3W markets. "India's increasingly dynamic electric 2W market hosted a total of 220 OEMs in 2024, up from 180 in 2023, although the four market leaders accounted for a combined 80% of the 1.3 million electric 2Ws sold in the country in 2024 (6% of the overall 2W market)," the report said.