David Fickling, Columnist

Electric Scooters Are Choking Oil’s Boom Market

The three-wheel auto-rickshaw sector is electrifying rapidly due to lower fueling costs. Motorbikes are next.

February 27, 2024 at 10:00 PM UTC

David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change and energy. Previously, he worked for Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

A Mahindra Last Mile Mobility Ltd. Treo SFT electric rickshaw.
Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg

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Life moves pretty fast. That’s especially true in India’s booming cities.

A decade ago, the country’s iconic auto-rickshaws had three wheels and a diesel engine. Battery-powered versions existed, but only enough to be seen as a novelty and unregulated threat. Officially, just 12 e-rickshaws were sold nationwide in 2014.1