What GST you pay on an EV in India, and the saving over petrol now

The short answer

Your electric car or two wheeler is taxed at 5% GST, same as it was before. That rate did not move when the GST Council rewrote the rest of the tax table on 22 September 2025 under what is now called GST 2.0. What changed is everything around the EV. Small petrol, CNG and LPG cars dropped from a combined 29% to a flat 18%. SUVs dropped from 50% to 40%. So the tax edge EVs used to hold over petrol cars is smaller than it was a year ago, even though the EV's own number has not moved.

How GST 2.0 narrowed the gap with petrol

Before 22 September 2025, a small petrol, CNG or LPG car, one with an engine up to 1,200cc and a length up to 4,000mm, carried 28% GST plus a 1% cess, a total of 29%. After the reform it is a flat 18%, no cess. An SUV, defined as over 1,500cc, over 4,000mm and with ground clearance of 170mm or more, went from 28% GST plus 22% cess, a total of 50%, down to a flat 40%. The EV stayed at 5% through all of it.

Run the gap both ways. Against the small car, the EV's tax advantage was 24 percentage points before the reform and is 13 points now. Against the SUV, it was 45 points and is 35 points now. The EV is still cheaper to tax than either, but by a smaller margin than a year ago.

Your charger is goods, your charging bill is a service

Buy a home charger or a charging station as a piece of equipment and it is taxed as goods, at 5%, under HSN code 8504. Pay to plug in at a public charger, or swap a battery at a swap station, and you are paying for a service, taxed at 18%, under SAC code 998714.

That distinction traces back to a Karnataka Authority for Advance Ruling from 2023, in a case filed by Chamundeswari Electricity Supply Corporation, the discom that serves the Mysuru region. The ruling, KAR ADRG 24/2023 dated 13 July 2023, held that charging a battery is a maintenance and repair service, not a sale of electricity, so it does not get electricity's GST exemption. When the GST Council's Fitment Committee reviewed requests to bring charging and swapping down to 5%, or to treat them as energy rather than a service, in the run up to the September 2025 reform, it turned those requests down. The 18% stands.

What this means when you buy or run an EV

If you buy a replacement lithium ion battery on its own, say for an old electric scooter, it is taxed at 18% under its own HSN code, not the vehicle's 5%. The 5% only applies when the battery comes fitted to the vehicle at first sale.

GST is a central, flat rate. It does not vary by state. Road tax, registration fee waivers and any state top up incentive are separate and do vary, Karnataka's own road tax bands are a different story from this one. When you add up what an EV actually costs to buy and run, keep GST, road tax and the 18% on every public charging session as three separate lines, not one number.

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