“Our ambition should be to extend beyond exporting vehicles to exporting platforms, exporting technologies, exporting engineering expertise, exporting software, exporting components, and of course exporting complete mobility solutions,” said Garg during CII Next-Gen eMobility Summit 2026.
Garg believes India is a combination of engineering talent, a young workforce, a digitising economy, growing renewable energy ecosystem and a large startup place providing it an opportunity to develop mobility solutions that can be deployed not only domestically but across emerging markets.
“That will be the true meaning of moving from making India to creating India for the world,” he said.
Aligning with the government’s agenda of strengthening localisation, Garg said the next phase of localisation will also need to move beyond simply replacing imported components with domestically manufactured products.
“Localisation goes beyond replacing imported components with locally manufactured alternatives.” It should include domestic engineering knowledge, supplier capabilities, testing systems, intellectual property and skilled talent, he said.
The government has rolled out multiple programmes such as PM E-DRIVE, PLI schemes, among others to improve localisation.
Annual EV registrations in the country rose from less than 2 lakh units in FY20 to nearly 25 lakh units in FY26 while its penetration increased from around 8 per cent in 2025 to more than 12.5 per cent in July 2026. According to Garg, wider product availability, improving charging infrastructure, localisation and government initiatives, could help India build one of the world’s largest clean mobility ecosystems.
During this transition phase, India is required to deepen its capabilities across batteries, power electronics, semiconductors, software, critical minerals, charging systems, vehicle engineering and recycling along with strengthening global supply chains and domestic technology development.Suppliers need to raise R&D investmentsAccording to Garg, a key part of this transitional phase will be a stronger focus on technology and R&D among the industry, instead of heavily depending on OEMs and global technology partners like earlier.
“High time that we apportion a significant portion of our budget into R&D even at the supply chain level,” he said.
This can be achieved with collaboration across industries; OEMs, suppliers, startups, academia and government.
Localisation goes beyond import substitutionAlong with this, he believes domestic capabilities can be built through regulations around emissions, safety, fuel efficiency, cybersecurity and sustainability. “Sometimes we are seeing the regulation as a pressure or as a responsibility. I think they should be viewed as an opportunity to build capability rather than just, you know, a responsibility,” he added.
He added that no single technology can be a fit for India and highlighted that a multi-powertrain approach, including CNG, hybrids, EVs, hydrogen, would be more suitable for a country as diverse as India. Depending totally on the use case, such as hydrogen could play a role in long-range, high-utilisation applications, including heavy commercial vehicles and buses, he said
The appropriate technology will depend on affordability, infrastructure, geography and the specific use case. Hydrogen according to him could play a role in long-range, high-utilisation applications, including heavy commercial vehicles and buses.
He insisted on looking at the bigger picture i.e, the industry has to bring advanced technology and sustainable mobility at an affordable rate along with designing vehicles for local driving conditions.
Published On Aug 18, 2026 at 08:06 AM IST
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