As I write this, I have a flight to catch. So let’s do this in a short question-and-answer format.
Dude, where have you guys been?
We were here, but had no bandwidth to publish. We were busy doing work that hopefully keeps InsightEV free for everyone, forever. We run a revenue-neutral website with zero advertising, so our money comes from providing advisory services. BTW, if you want to connect regarding our advisory services, just email me at deepesh (at) insightev (dot) com.
Whatever! Why Tailwinds?
First, I heard someone use this term yesterday, so it stayed on my mind. Also, I’m an aviation geek. So you will have to bear with the term in this article today.
On a serious note, all the news out there has been extremely positive for the Indian E2W industry. The war woke people up to the fact that oil prices can change. The Modi government had made them habituated to stability in pump prices. So even when the Indian pump prices went up by 7%, the panic was more like 100%.
What Else?
It also doesn’t help that India has switched to ethanol-blended fuels overnight, something that is still being debated by the automotive industry and influencers on social media on its impact on the health of internal combustion engines and fuel lines. Customers read it as “I’d rather buy an EV than suffer the problems that my motorcycle engine is likely to face because of bad fuel.”
Did the Delhi EV policy help?
No, sir. The Delhi EV policy notification came towards the end of the month, so it won’t have an immediate impact on vehicle sales. Anyways, the ICE registration cutoff is in April 2028, so an impact on the sales mix will only start happening closer to that date.
Give us the headline numbers.
Total E2W sales were a little more than 193,500 units.
Woah! That’s huge. Is that the best ever?
Not even close. That distinction belongs to March 2026, when a panic due to the (Seventh) Gulf War and decaying incentive benefits made people rush to the showrooms. That month was close to 200K units.
So was June 2026 any special?
Very. E2W penetration (share of overall 2W sales) reached 10.59, the highest ever. In March 2026, while the penetration levels did climb, they were offset by a rise in overall two-wheeler sales, as it was the end of the year. June 2026 was special.
Is TVS still leading?
Why are you complaining? Don’t you like some stability in the world? The E2W market pecking order hasn’t changed this month! TVS is the leader, followed by Bajaj and Ather, with Hero and Vida rounding up the top five. Greaves remains a strong #6. Even companies like Bgauss and River, that come below that in the pecking order, had a great month.
So did everyone report a strong increase in sales?
That entirely depends on how you want to slice and dice the data. As responsible analysts, we only do year-over-year comparisons.
Give us the download
TVS is up by 82%, Bajaj is up by 91%, Ather Energy is up by 121%, Hero MotoCorp is up by 195%, and Greaves is up by 153%.
The only sucker in the list is Ola Electric, which is down by about 15%.
So where do we go from here?
After every high month, you normally have a couple of months of stabilization, so we expect July and August to moderate things a bit. These are also the monsoon months, and a lot of small towns in the country get flooded with water. That is never good for poorly made EVs with hub motors. A broken-down EV is an advertisement for people not to buy one.
Meanwhile, the Gulf War is over for now, and crude prices have crashed. That is good news for ICE 2Ws.
Where do you go from here?
We return to regular publishing on Thursday. The first take would be a pretty comprehensive analysis of the recent happenings in Africa. With one of the players raising USD 270 million in one funding round, we examine if there is any breathing space left for everyone else.
