India's EV car sales jump 75% in October as overall car market falls 14.6%

Cars buck the trend as the market shrinks

India's overall passenger vehicle market had a weak October. Vahan data analysed by marksmendaily showed total car registrations falling 14.6% year on year to 5,01,406 units, a slide the report linked partly to Diwali moving from October last year to November this year, which shifts festive buying out of the month for comparison purposes.

Electric cars went the other way. The same dataset put EV car registrations at 36,646 units in October 2026, up 74.7% from a year earlier, taking the EV share of the car market to 7.3% from roughly half that a year ago.

A separate manufacturer level count by autopunditz, also pulled from Vahan, put the October EV car tally slightly lower at 36,064 units, up 76.7% year on year. The gap between the two counts is normal. Vahan is a live dashboard and RTOs keep adding entries for days after a month ends, so any two snapshots taken on different dates will differ by a few hundred units. Treat both numbers as directionally right rather than exact.

Tata and Mahindra still dominate, VinFast's small base inflates its growth

On autopunditz's manufacturer table, Tata Motors led with 14,669 EV registrations, followed by Mahindra at 8,542 and MG Motor at 5,940. VinFast registered 2,571 units, a jump of 1,710.6% year on year, but that is growth off a near zero base the previous October rather than evidence of a breakout month. Kia registered 1,395 EVs, Maruti Suzuki's e Vitara added 1,200 in its first full month in the data, Hyundai logged 760 and BYD 737.

Tata and Mahindra between them still account for well over half of every EV car sold in the country in a given month, a pattern that has held for most of 2026.

Cars are a small part of the EV count, and Karnataka is ahead of the curve

Cars are not where most of India's electrified vehicles are. EVreporter's tracker, built on the same Vahan feed, counted 3,54,284 electrified vehicles across all categories in October, with electric two wheelers alone at 2,23,964 units. Two wheeler EV penetration actually fell, from 11.6% in September to 9.7% in October, and four wheeler penetration eased from 8.7% to 7.3% over the same month, so the year on year jump in cars has not stopped a month on month dip in share for either segment.

For Karnataka, state wise Vahan figures compiled by flashfinance.news show EVs made up 13.8% of all vehicle registrations in the state for 2026 so far through October, well above the national four wheeler penetration figure and a reminder that Bengaluru's early charging infrastructure and state incentives still show up in the numbers even as the national two wheeler share cools.

For an Indian buyer, the headline takeaway is that one bad month for the overall car market does not mean EVs are slowing down with it. The two trends are moving in opposite directions, and the gap between manufacturers' separate counts is a useful reminder to wait for a full month of RTO filings before treating any single number as final.

Sources

• EV Registrations Jump 75% in October While India's Car Market Shrinks 14.6%
• Electric Car Sales October 2026: Registrations Surge 77% YoY to 36,064 Units. Tata Leads, Mahindra Gains, MG Loses Market Share
• India's Electric Vehicle Sales Trend, October 2026
• State-wise Vehicle Registration Data India 2026 (Vahan)