"Cars Are A Fallacy": Ador Digatron CEO On What Will Truly Clean Up India's Air

India needs to focus more on two and three-wheelers and public transport to clean up its air, Ravin Mirchandani, Chairman and CEO of Ador Digatron, has suggested.

At the NDTV World Summit 2025, he said the real change would come not from personal cars but from the vehicles that make up most of India's roads.

"Why are we trying to be electric and go for clean or zero-emission mobility? Because we want to deliver ourselves from the tyranny of the hydrocarbon molecule, not having to import fuel, and we want our children to have better quality air in the cities," Mirchandani said.

Pointing to the scale of India's vehicular base, he said the country is home to 360 million vehicles, of which 82 per cent are two- and three-wheelers, 12 per cent are trucks and buses, and just 6-8 per cent are cars.

"So, the conversation around personal cars is a fallacy. The way to clean up India's air and reduce dependence on hydrocarbons is to focus on the two- and three-wheelers, and then the trucks and buses," he said.

According to Mirchandani, 2025 is the first year in history when electric three-wheelers have outsold those with internal combustion engines (ICE). The adoption curve for electric two-wheelers, he said, has also accelerated dramatically.

"In 2020, you'd see one green number plate a month. Then it became one a week, one a day, one an hour, and now it's one a minute. That's how fast the two-wheeler transition is happening," he observed.

Mirchandani credited the Indian government's public transport electrification push for driving large-scale transformation.

"The next tender coming out is for 15,000 electric buses in a single year. Compare that with Australia's 150 buses, which shows the scale of India's ambition," he said.

He added that after buses, the next phase will be the electrification of trucks, starting with intra-city movement and gradually expanding to long-haul intercity routes.

Mirchandani said that real progress towards cleaner air would come from targeting the segments with the biggest impact.

"Out of 360 million vehicles, let's focus on where the real big bang is going to be: two-wheelers, three-wheelers, buses, and trucks. That's where India's clean mobility story will be written," he said.