India EV Market Gets Massive Shot of Steroids

A few weeks ago, I wrote to you about how New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a new mandate that requires Uber (NYSE: UBER) and Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT) to be zero emission by 2030.

What made that announcement so peculiar was the fact that both Uber and LYFT had already pledged to be completely electric by 2030.

Basically, Mayor Adams' announcement was done solely to placate those who think the government should force us all into electric cars.

While I am a long-time advocate of electric vehicle integration, I'm rarely in support of such mandates. Particularly when they are superfluous.

In any event, to further bolster my argument that Uber and LYFT don't need to be forced by bureaucrats to transition from internal combustion to vehicle electrification, it was announced on Monday that Uber had inked a deal with Tata Motors (NSE: TATAMOTORS) for 25,000 EVs to add to its network.

While India has lagged behind the top 20 countries for EV sales (most of which are in Europe), the country did register more than 10.5 million EV sales for 2022. Although 93% of those EV sales were for two-wheelers and low-speed three wheelers.

So yes, 25,000 electric passenger cars is a pretty big deal. For Tata, too, which has only sold 44,000 EVs in India to date.

The Tata model Uber ordered is the XPRES-T EV, which delivers just under 200 miles per charge and takes about 90 minutes to charge from 0% to 80%.

It's not the most exciting-looking car, but that doesn't take away from the importance of this deal.

Tata is currently the leader in electric passenger vehicles, followed by Mahindra (NSE: MAHINDCIE), BYD (OTCBB: BYDDF), and Hyundai (OTCBB: HYMTF).

Worth noting, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) was looking to get into the India market, too, but it looks like regulatory burdens put the kibosh on that.