Can Retrofitment Drive India’s Mobility Revolution

India should move beyond merely optimising imported technologies and create scalable, India-specific innovation models, as demonstrated by Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and quick commerce. Electric-vehicle retrofitment offers a similar opportunity suited to India’s density, informality and scale.

Vehicle retrofitment converts an existing petrol or diesel vehicle into an electric vehicle by replacing its powertrain while retaining the chassis. Its wider innovation ecosystem requires legacy-vehicle diagnostics, retrofit-compatible batteries and power electronics, calibration software, testing protocols, safety certification, financing, installation networks and skilled service workers.

India possesses the necessary foundations, including a deep automotive supply chain, frugal-engineering expertise, a growing electric-vehicle sector, software capabilities and a large, diverse domestic market for testing solutions.

Unlike new electric-vehicle manufacturing, which benefits from scale and centralisation, retrofitment can grow through local workshops, technicians and entrepreneurs. This decentralised model can support employment and reach vehicle owners in smaller towns and rural areas.

The PM Surya Ghar Yojana (PMSGY) rooftop-solar programme has reached over 63 lakh households through more than 34,000 empanelled vendors, generating over 4.6 lakh jobs across the rooftop-solar value chain. Its distributed implementation provides a model for thousands of certified local retrofitment centres, each potentially generating at least 20 direct and indirect jobs.

India’s automotive ecosystem extends beyond metropolitan cities, with millions of vehicles operating in Tier-II and Tier-III towns and rural areas through informal mechanics, garages and spare-parts dealers. Standards and training could convert neighbourhood workshops into certified retrofitters, while local proximity could improve consumer trust in electric mobility.

Countries across South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America face ageing vehicle fleets, price-sensitive consumers and longer vehicle-ownership cycles. The Global South spends over $550 billion annually on oil imports, and retrofitment could reduce this dependence faster and more affordably than relying solely on new electric-vehicle sales, which replace only a fraction of the existing fleet each year.

UPI-linked payments operate in eight countries, while India has signed digital-infrastructure cooperation agreements with 23 more. UPI’s international success resulted from exporting a replicable implementation model rather than merely selling a payments application, offering a precedent for India’s retrofitment strategy.

India could create an exportable retrofitment system by developing certification standards, financing models, safety protocols and training pipelines for neighbouring and similarly situated countries. Such a system could address fuel-import pressures while generating opportunities for Indian manufacturing, services and technical expertise.

Realising this opportunity requires treating retrofitment as a deliberate innovation category rather than a temporary solution until new electric vehicles become universally affordable. India’s engineering talent, manufacturing base, technician networks and domestic testing market must be integrated at a scale comparable to PMSGY.