NITI Aayog member Rajiv Gauba launched the Platform for Aggregating Clean Transport (PACT) and the Zero-Emission Truck (ZET) marketplace on 7 September 2026 at the 5th e-FAST India Summit in New Delhi. A zero-emission truck is a freight vehicle, usually powered by a battery or hydrogen fuel cell, that releases no tailpipe gases. The two platforms aim to shift India from small electric truck pilots to large scale clean freight that supports sustainable transport and the national net zero target.
What Was Launched at the 5th e-FAST India Summit?
NITI Aayog member Rajiv Gauba launched both platforms on 7 September 2026 at The Ashok in New Delhi during the 5th e-FAST India Summit 2026. The Electric Freight Accelerator for Sustainable Transport (e-FAST) is India’s first national electric freight platform. NITI Aayog started it jointly with WRI India on 7 September 2022 with support from 12 knowledge partners.
The Summit brought together policy makers, industry leaders, financiers, logistics service providers, utilities, truck makers and charge point operators. The theme for 2026 was to move from pilots and early incentives to coordinated action for large scale deployment. Electric truck deployment in India rose more than fourfold, from 201 vehicles in FY25 to 826 vehicles in FY26. More than 3,000 electric medium and heavy duty trucks are now estimated to be running across the country.
The e-FAST journey has built steadily over the last three years. At the 14th Clean Energy Ministerial in Goa in July 2023, 16 companies from cement, chemicals, dairy, food and services gave a combined demand signal for 7,750 electric freight vehicles by 2030. That signal gave manufacturers and investors early confidence. PACT and the ZET marketplace are the next step to turn such signals into firm orders, finance and charging points on the ground.
What Is PACT and How Will It Work?
PACT stands for Platform for Aggregating Clean Transport. Freight means the movement of goods by road, rail, sea or air. In India, road transport carries about 70 percent of domestic freight demand, which is close to 2.2 trillion tonne km of goods movement. PACT focuses on this road freight segment.
PACT collects and combines freight demand from many small users into a large and clear pool. At present, more than 75 percent of the freight market is made up of small operators who own fewer than five trucks. This creates scattered demand. No single operator can assure a truck maker or a charging company that enough electric trucks will run on a route. PACT solves this by joining the demand of shippers, logistics service providers and other ecosystem players and mapping it onto identified freight corridors.
A freight corridor is a busy road or rail route that carries heavy goods traffic between industrial hubs, ports and cities. Examples include the Delhi Jaipur stretch on National Highway 48 and the Bengaluru Chennai highway, where electric truck trials have already taken place. PACT will show where demand is strong enough to run electric trucks daily and where chargers should come up first. This corridor approach helps planners place high power chargers, battery swapping stations and grid connections where use will be highest.
| Stakeholder in PACT | Role in the platform |
|---|---|
| Shippers | Companies that own goods, such as cement, steel, dairy and e-commerce firms, and declare their freight needs |
| Logistics Service Providers | Transport and fleet companies that move goods and will operate electric trucks |
| Truck manufacturers | Original equipment makers such as Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland and Volvo Eicher that supply electric trucks |
| Financiers | Banks, non banking lenders and leasing firms that fund trucks and charging assets |
| Charge point operators | Firms that set up and run public charging stations along corridors |
By bringing these groups to one table, PACT improves demand visibility. Manufacturers can plan production. Charging firms can plan hubs. Financiers can judge whether an electric truck project will earn enough through high daily use. Gauba said the next phase of electric mobility needs such demand aggregation along with new financing and coordinated corridor planning.
What Is the Zero-Emission Truck Marketplace?
The Zero-Emission Truck (ZET) marketplace is an interactive business engagement platform for clean freight. While PACT maps and pools freight demand, the marketplace helps firms act on that demand. It allows participants to display products, find buyers and sellers, and form partnerships for vehicles, finance and charging.
An electric truck maker can meet a logistics company that needs 50 trucks on a fixed route. A charge point operator can offer charging as a service at a hub. A financier can structure a lease linked to daily running. A technology provider can offer battery health monitoring or fleet software. The marketplace enables these links in one place instead of separate bilateral talks.
Financing is a central reason for such a platform. Electric medium and heavy duty vehicles, called e-MHDVs, cost more to buy than diesel trucks but cost less to run per km. Buyers still hesitate because banks worry about battery life, second hand value and resale risk. This keeps interest rates high. At the Summit, Gauba called for blended finance, which mixes public or concessional funds with private capital, and for leasing models that bring the cost of loans for electric trucks closer to diesel trucks. The Road Transport and Highways Secretary V Umashankar said clear data on battery health can raise resale value and lower this risk. The marketplace will make such data, products and offers more visible to all sides.
Why Zero-Emission Freight Matters for India
Sustainable transport means a system that moves people and goods while cutting pollution, saving fuel and protecting the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Decarbonisation means reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from an activity. Freight decarbonisation is urgent because diesel trucks pollute far more than their numbers suggest.
Heavy and medium trucks form only 3 to 4 percent of India’s vehicle fleet but produce about 42 percent of transport related greenhouse gas emissions and a large share of particulate pollution. Only about 800 heavy duty electric trucks were sold in 2025, which shows how early the shift still is. Long distance freight needs high daily use, reliable charging and loans that factor in battery risk, so change is slower than in cars or city buses.
A zero-emission vehicle produces no tailpipe pollutants during use. In trucks, this usually means a battery electric truck, which runs on a large battery charged from the grid, or a hydrogen fuel cell truck, which uses hydrogen to make electricity on board. Both options cut tailpipe carbon to zero, though their full benefit depends on clean power and green hydrogen. NITI Aayog and RMI estimated in 2022 that wide use of such trucks could cut annual trucking carbon by 46 percent by 2050 and save 2.8 to 3.8 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide cumulatively through 2050.
| Electric truck | Diesel truck |
|---|---|
| No tailpipe emissions, lower smoke and noise | Releases carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter |
| Higher purchase price, much lower fuel and maintenance cost per km | Lower purchase price, higher diesel and maintenance cost per km |
| Needs chargers along routes and time for charging or swapping | Can refuel quickly at widespread fuel stations |
| Resale value still uncertain due to limited battery history | Well known resale market and repair network |
Clean freight also supports India’s pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2070. Net zero means the amount of greenhouse gases released is balanced by the amount removed from the atmosphere. It is linked to the Viksit Bharat 2047 goal of becoming a developed nation. Without cleaning trucks, which carry the bulk of goods, these climate and health goals will be hard to meet.
NITI Aayog and the Wider Push for Electric Freight
NITI Aayog stands for the National Institution for Transforming India. The Union Cabinet created it through a resolution on 1 January 2015. It replaced the Planning Commission, which was set up in 1950. NITI Aayog is the apex policy think tank of the central government. It gives directional and policy inputs and technical advice to the Centre and states.
The Prime Minister chairs NITI Aayog. Its Governing Council includes chief ministers of all states and lieutenant governors of union territories. This design promotes cooperative federalism, which means the Centre and states work together on national priorities. NITI Aayog is neither a constitutional body nor a statutory body created by an Act of Parliament. It functions as an executive think tank. The member who launched PACT, Rajiv Gauba, is a 1982 batch Jharkhand cadre officer who served as Cabinet Secretary from 2019 to 2024 and joined NITI Aayog as a full time member in March 2025.
PACT sits within a larger policy stack for green trucks. The PM Electric Drive Revolution in Innovative Vehicle Enhancement (PM E-DRIVE) scheme runs from 1 October 2024 to 31 March 2026 with an outlay of ₹10,900 crore. In July 2025, the Ministry of Heavy Industries opened India’s first direct incentive window for e-trucks under this scheme. It will support about 5,600 e-trucks with up to ₹9.6 lakh per vehicle as an upfront price cut. About 1,100 e-trucks registered in Delhi have a dedicated provision of ₹100 crore to tackle air quality. The benefits cover N2 category trucks with gross vehicle weight above 3.5 tonnes and up to 12 tonnes and N3 category trucks above 12 tonnes and up to 55 tonnes under the Central Motor Vehicle Rules. Makers must give a battery warranty of five years or five lakh km and a vehicle and motor warranty of five years or 2.5 lakh km. Other supports include production linked incentive schemes for automobiles and advanced chemistry cells and charging investment by oil marketing companies.
The Way Forward
The immediate test for PACT is to name priority corridors and fill them with trucks and chargers together. Studies for corridors such as Delhi Jaipur have mapped hubs at places such as Bhiwadi, Neemrana and Shahjahanpur and tested 240 kW fast chargers that take one to three hours, with a shift to 500 kW chargers that can charge heavy trucks in under an hour at scale. Battery swapping stations at hubs are another option for trucks that cannot wait long. PACT can use live freight data to decide which model fits each route and to help power utilities plan grid links and green tariffs for charging.
The second test is cost. Studies suggest total cost of ownership for electric trucks in the medium duty segment can already be lower than diesel at scale, with parity for heavy duty trucks possible around 2027 if use is high and charging is assured. To reach that point, financiers need standard battery passports, clear residual value norms and lease products. Regulators need to update the Central Motor Vehicle Rules for battery safety, standardisation and overhead automated charging. States can add time bound toll waivers and dedicated freight lanes, as seen in pilots like the Telangana Zero-Emission Truck Accelerator and trials on the Bengaluru Chennai highway.
If PACT turns scattered intent into bankable corridor pipelines and the ZET marketplace turns pipelines into signed deals, India can scale from hundreds of trucks to thousands in the next two years. That scale will decide whether clean freight remains a set of pilots or becomes the normal way goods move.
Key Takeaways
- PACT (Platform for Aggregating Clean Transport) and the ZET marketplace were launched on 7 September 2026 at the 5th e-FAST India Summit at The Ashok, New Delhi by NITI Aayog member Rajiv Gauba.
- e-FAST stands for Electric Freight Accelerator for Sustainable Transport and was started on 7 September 2022 by NITI Aayog with WRI India as India’s first national electric freight platform.
- PACT pools freight demand from shippers and logistics providers across identified corridors to guide electric truck deployment and charging infrastructure planning.
- Electric truck deployment rose from 201 vehicles in FY25 to 826 vehicles in FY26, with more than 3,000 e-MHDVs now operating, while only about 800 heavy duty electric trucks were sold in 2025.
- Trucks form only 3 to 4 percent of vehicles but cause about 42 percent of transport related greenhouse gases, while road carries about 70 percent of domestic freight.
- NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) was created on 1 January 2015 replacing the Planning Commission (1950), and the PM E-DRIVE scheme (₹10,900 crore) supports about 5,600 e-trucks with up to ₹9.6 lakh per vehicle.
