Electric two-wheeler industry coming out of Covid shocks

As the market is slowly opening up post-lockdown, the electric twowheeler industry is recovering. According to the data available on ‘Vahan Sewa’ of the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH), the Electric Vehicle (EV) industry sold 1,873 high-speed electric scooters in the April-June quarter.

Low-Speed sales are not tracked by ‘Vahan Sewa’ but as per the industry estimate, 85% of the sales come from low-speed and that puts the total April-August sales to around 10,500 units. The sale figures in July for high-speed have been 1,344 and the extrapolated total sale for July comes to 9,000 units. This makes the total sale April-July 2020 at 23,500. This is despite most of the network shutters being down due to the Covid-19 lockdown. July has been a good month for Hero and Ampere in the high-speed segments which have sold a higher number of bikes as against July of last year. Okinawa though lost heavily in the sale of its high-speed scooters in July as compared to the previous year. Hero continues to be the market leader in both these segments.

Two important announcements made last week are also adding to the optimism. The Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) approved the Delhi Electric Vehicle Policy 2020 on 7 August, aiming for EVs to account for a quarter of new vehicle sales in the region by 2024 and the MoRTHannounced that it will allow registration of EVS without the batteries.