India Sold a Record 3,33,634 Electric Vehicles in September 2026, 74 Per Cent More Than a Year Earlier, at About 13 Per Cent of All Retail Sales

Dealers across India retailed 3,33,634 electric vehicles in September 2026, the highest monthly total on record and 74 per cent more than in September 2025. A lakh is 100,000, so that is a little over 3.3 lakh. Electric vehicles took about 13 per cent of all retail vehicle sales that month, against about 10 per cent a year earlier, according to the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA), the national body of vehicle dealers.

FADA’s release is dated 6 October 2026 and gives the total as about 3.34 lakh and the share as roughly 13 per cent. Autocar Professional and the news agency IANS reported the segment-by-segment figures on 7 October. September is the most recent full month in FADA’s data as of 29 October 2026.

Where the 3.33 lakh came from

Every one of the four electric segments grew on September 2025. Electric two-wheelers and electric passenger vehicles each set a monthly record, as FADA’s data reported by IBEF and IANS show.

The four segment totals add up to the headline figure. Two-wheelers and three-wheelers together are 2,93,338 vehicles, 88 per cent of the month, by this article’s arithmetic. The same table in Autocar Professional gives August’s segment totals, which sum to 2,98,448, so September was about 11.8 per cent above August. Spread over 30 days, the month averages roughly 11,100 electric vehicles a day.

FADA’s own release says its overall retail figure covers 25,36,920 vehicles of all kinds in September, which makes the electric share 13.2 per cent on this article’s division. For passenger cars, FADA puts electric at 8.45 per cent of retail sales, up from 5.74 per cent a year earlier, in a market where petrol held 41.27 per cent and CNG 23.11 per cent.

Two-wheelers: five makers, one record month

Retail sales of electric two-wheelers reached 2,07,314 in September. In FADA’s maker table, as printed by Autocar Professional, TVS Motor led with 54,037, followed by Bajaj Auto at 48,429, Ather Energy at 30,533, Hero MotoCorp at 24,321 and Ola Electric at 13,451. TVS was up 125.87 per cent on a year earlier.

A second count, built from Vahan, the road ministry’s registration database, and compiled by the brokerage Nuvama, gives slightly different units for the same month: 2,03,411 registrations, 11.4 per cent of all two-wheelers, with TVS at 53,989 and Bajaj at 48,383. Bajaj’s registrations rose 139 per cent on the year, and its gap to TVS narrowed to 5,606 units. TVS, Bajaj and Hero together held 62 per cent of September registrations.

The half-year picture is larger still. Nuvama counts 11,08,606 electric two-wheeler registrations from April to September 2026, up 73 per cent from 6,39,762 a year earlier. Raghunandhan NL of Nuvama attributed the gain to higher aspirational value for the vehicles and a wider range of models at different prices. He also noted that the established makers Hero, TVS and Bajaj, along with Ather, gained market share over the half-year.

Cars: Tata’s best month and a crowded field

Autocar India counts 35,995 electric passenger vehicles retailed in September, a record, against 18,520 a year earlier. It was the fourth month in a row above 30,000. From April to September the total was 1,90,946, up 88 per cent, which is 29,971 units short of the whole of financial year 2025-26.

Tata Motors sold 14,769, its best month and above its earlier high of 14,388 in July, for a 41.03 per cent share. The Nexon EV was its top seller. Mahindra followed with 7,779, up 96 per cent on the year, and JSW MG Motor with 5,242. VinFast reached 2,963, after selling 6 in September 2025.

Kia sold 1,263 and Maruti Suzuki’s e Vitara 1,103, its sixth month in a row above 1,000. Tesla’s 291 was its highest month in India, and luxury electric cars together reached 975, also a record.

FADA’s passenger vehicle count is 36,108 and Autocar India’s is 35,995. The 113-unit gap is small, and neither source says what causes it. Autocar India does not name its data source.

Three-wheelers and trucks

Electric vehicles are already most of the three-wheeler market. Their 64.9 per cent share was marginally below August’s 65.3 per cent, and the 86,024 sold were 40.03 per cent more than a year before. Bajaj Auto led the makers’ list with 15,109 and the Mahindra group followed with 14,716, per FADA’s data as reported by Autocar Professional.

The International Energy Agency’s Global EV Outlook 2026 calls India the world’s largest electric three-wheeler market, with almost 800,000 sold in 2025 and almost 70 per cent of the segment. The agency measures a calendar year and a different base, so its share is not directly comparable with FADA’s monthly one.

Electric commercial vehicles, meaning trucks and other goods and passenger carriers above three wheels, more than doubled to 4,188. Tata Motors had 1,275 of them and Euler Motors 1,064. The segment is the one that fell from August, by 10.93 per cent.

What the dealers and the ministry credit

FADA’s president Sai Giridhar named four drivers: festive demand, better running-cost economics for owners, a wider choice of models, and policy support through PM E-DRIVE and state schemes, as IBEF reported. IANS quotes him saying the growth is led by demand, not by subsidy.

PM E-DRIVE is the Ministry of Heavy Industries’ main purchase scheme. The Press Information Bureau (PIB) factsheet of 1 October 2026 gives its outlay as Rs 11,900 crore, running to 31 March 2028. Registered electric two-wheelers priced up to Rs 1.5 lakh ex-factory get Rs 2,500 per kilowatt-hour of battery, capped at Rs 5,000 a vehicle. The scheme had supported 26.59 lakh sales by June 2026, and Rs 851 crore had been approved for 8,147 charging points with three oil marketing companies and 10 states by 28 September 2026.

A PIB backgrounder of 5 August 2026 adds that electric vehicles carry a 5 per cent goods and services tax, and that the stated national goal is for 30 per cent of vehicle sales to be electric by 2030. It puts the electric share of sales at 0.08 per cent in 2015-16 and 8.26 per cent in 2025-26, without naming a source. FADA’s 13 per cent is one month’s retail share, so the two figures are not like for like. Our earlier piece on India’s electric vehicle registrations and subsidies covers the 2025 totals, charging counts and battery cell plans, and the rare earth magnet scheme covers the magnets used in electric motors.

How to read the figures

FADA’s retail count is gathered from regional transport offices (RTOs), where vehicles are registered. Autocar Professional says FADA collated the September data on 3 October from 1,468 of the 1,469 offices, and that the dataset had no Tamil Nadu data for commercial vehicles and three-wheelers. Totals for those two segments therefore leave that state out.

Several makers did not grow. Ola Electric’s 13,451 was down 2.96 per cent on September 2025 in FADA’s table, and Nuvama puts its share of registrations at 6.6 per cent, against 12.6 per cent a year earlier. Maruti Suzuki’s e Vitara sold 25 per cent fewer than in August, which Autocar India attributes to export allocation limiting domestic supply. Mahindra’s 7,779 was below its July record of 8,131.

On the overall market, FADA says the 31.82 per cent rise in total retail sales is the most distorted figure of the year. The release says buyers deferred purchases in the week before GST 2.0, the revised goods and services tax rates, took effect on 22 September 2025, so last September’s base was low. Our explainer on how GST works describes the structure those rates sit in.

FADA’s dealer survey found 75.57 per cent expecting growth in October, up from 67.09 per cent who had expected it for September, with Navratri running from 11 to 20 October.