Baddi – Barotiwala – Nalagarh is Asia's largest pharmaceutical hub and home to one of its biggest truck unions. Around 20,000 freight vehicles are registered in the industrial region, and only 13% of the vehicles surveyed ran on petrol: the rest were diesel.
~20,000freight vehicles registered in the region
87%of surveyed freight vehicles on diesel
80%utilisation of the surveyed LCVs
127.8 kmaverage daily distance of an LCV
On the ground
Teams from Delhi and Shimla met the RTO, the BBN Development Authority, the State Town Planner, the electricity board's engineers, Tata Motors in Nalagarh and Baddi Municipal Council, and visited truck yards, substations and possible charging sites. A driver survey covered ownership, vehicle age, loads, distances, stops, parking and awareness of EVs.
The study
- Total cost of ownership comparisons, and a worked Baddi – Ludhiana round trip.
- Case studies: Indore's electric waste fleet and Amazon India's electric LCVs.
- Business models: pay-per-use, subscription, leasing, revenue sharing, battery and vehicle loans.
- Policy asks: carbon credits, EV financing under CGTMSE, battery swapping, charging at dhabas, grid and transformer upgrades, building by-law changes, and a stakeholder committee.
An EV sensitisation workshop in Baddi in July 2025 brought operators, industry and government together on the findings.
