Scoping review maps electric vehicle barriers and policy gaps across South Asia

Electric vehicles are often framed as a rich-country story of luxury sedans and dense charging corridors, but a new scoping review argues that the world’s most consequential electrification experiment is unfolding elsewhere. Published in Discover Vehicles, the review systematically maps the electric vehicle adoption landscape across South Asia—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives—using the PRISMA-ScR reporting framework. After screening 83 full-text records and excluding eight, the authors charted 75 studies in depth, of which 56 provided unique evidence for the synthesis. The picture that emerges is structurally distinct from high-income markets in almost every dimension that matters.

The review’s central structural finding is what the authors call the micro-mobility pivot. In Western literature, the four-wheel passenger car is the default unit of analysis, but 73 percent of the reviewed South Asian literature focuses on vehicles other than four-wheel passenger cars—chiefly two- and three-wheelers. These vehicles dominate daily urban and peri-urban mobility across the region: in Nepal, motorcycles account for 81 percent of all registered vehicles, and two- and three-wheelers make up a large share of the motorized fleet in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Crucially, this segment offers the fastest route to total cost of ownership parity with combustion vehicles, making it the most economically plausible entry point for mass electrification.

The regional stakes are unusually high. South Asia, home to roughly 1.9 billion people as of 2023, is one of the fastest-motorizing regions on Earth and suffers some of the worst urban air quality in the world, with vehicle transport a main contributor to nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter in major Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian cities. Low-income communities bear the greatest health burden and have the least capacity to adapt. Energy security compounds the problem: India imports over 80 percent of its crude oil consumption at an annual cost of about USD 100 billion, while Nepal’s oil import bill amounts to roughly 10 percent of its GDP despite an estimated 42,000 MW of technically and economically feasible hydropower, of which less than 6 percent had been developed as of 2023. Scenario modeling for Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley projects that transport-sector emissions will triple by 2050 under business-as-usual conditions absent significant policy intervention.

National ambitions are correspondingly bold. India, through its Production Linked Incentive scheme for advanced chemistry cells and successive iterations of its FAME program, targets 30 percent electric share of new private car sales by 2030. Pakistan’s 2019 National Electric Vehicle Policy aimed at 30 percent EV penetration across vehicle categories, later followed by a New Energy Vehicles Policy for 2025–2030. Nepal’s Second Nationally Determined Contribution sets one of the developing world’s most ambitious goals: 90 percent of private passenger car sales to be battery electric by 2030. Bhutan, guided by its Gross National Happiness philosophy and a grid that is effectively 100 percent hydropower, has maintained EV policy infrastructure predating most regional peers, and the Maldives has folded transport electrification into its Nationally Determined Contribution to cut costly fossil-fuel imports and urban air pollution.

Yet the review’s most striking analytical contribution is its demonstration that the environmental value of an electric vehicle depends less on the vehicle than on the grid behind it. The authors organize the region into grid archetypes. In hydro-dominant Nepal and Bhutan, EVs deliver near-immediate well-to-wheel decarbonization plus macroeconomic shielding against oil import shocks. In fossil-fuel-dependent systems the calculus inverts: Bangladesh draws roughly 95 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels, India’s coal-heavy grid emits about 0.82 kgCO2 per kilowatt-hour, and Pakistan’s generation remains fossil-based. On these grids, unmanaged EV adoption risks simply displacing emissions from tailpipes to smokestacks—a bifurcation that explains why country-level studies can reach apparently opposite conclusions about EV benefits depending on generation mix.

The barriers to adoption are severe and, importantly, interlocking. High upfront capital cost is the single most important inhibitor: EVs are typically 140 to 170 percent more expensive than equivalent internal combustion vehicles, and import duties reach up to 89.1 percent in Bangladesh, with volatile and unpredictable duty changes compounding investment uncertainty. Infrastructure gaps compound the economics—there is a lack of skilled technicians for repairing power electronics, semiconductors and controllers, and public charging network density is inadequate. Unmanaged simultaneous charging of many vehicles, the review notes, can raise peak demand and produce undervoltage and power shortages on fossil-dependent grids. Policy and institutional weaknesses, including poorly coordinated inter-ministerial action, fragmented regulation and the absence of end-of-life battery and e-waste legislation, deprive investors and consumers of the predictability they need.

Behavioural factors complete the bottleneck. Status quo bias, range anxiety and uncertainty about battery life and resale value often outweigh environmental motivation, particularly in Sri Lanka, where the review applies a Prospect Theory lens to frame EV switching as perceived economic risk rather than experimental enthusiasm. Concerns about battery degradation under extreme climatic and topographic conditions—such as the steep inclines of the Kathmandu Valley—further erode consumer confidence. The authors argue these four barrier categories—infrastructure, economic, institutional and behavioural—form a reinforcing system: policy volatility suppresses demand, thin demand deters private charging investment, thin charging networks deepen range anxiety, and the cycle repeats.

Against this backdrop, the review identifies policy stability, not technological immaturity, as the binding constraint. Nepal illustrates the paradox: despite its 90 percent sales target, frequent fiscal reversals—excise duties shifting from 5 to 10 percent and financing limits cut from 80 to 60 percent—have undercut exactly the market certainty needed to stimulate e-mobility. The authors conclude that a stable, multi-year fiscal and regulatory regime would likely accelerate adoption more than larger but unpredictable subsidies, and that prioritizing high-utilization two- and three-wheelers and public transit, where total cost of ownership parity is closest, offers the fastest emissions and import-bill returns—provided grid decarbonization proceeds in parallel on fossil-dependent systems.

The review is equally candid about the weaknesses of the evidence base itself. Existing research relies almost exclusively on stated-preference surveys, while revealed-preference data on real-world financial decisions are largely absent. No longitudinal studies track how consumer bias and charging behaviour evolve as infrastructure expands. Most studies concentrate on capital cities such as Kathmandu, Dhaka and Thimphu, leaving rural and high-altitude feasibility largely unstudied, and there is essentially no South Asian evidence on end-of-life lithium-ion battery recycling or second-life use—a looming hazardous-waste risk as the first generation of EV batteries retires. The authors also flag an equity dimension: informal paratransit systems such as Nepal’s Safa Tempos and Bangladesh’s easy-bikes are among the most promising arenas for gender, equity and social inclusion outcomes, yet gender-disaggregated evidence remains scarce.

The authors acknowledge the review’s limitations: it was restricted to English-language sources and the databases and grey literature searched, the field’s reliance on stated-preference data constrains what any synthesis can conclude, and, consistent with scoping-review methodology, included sources were not formally appraised for quality. Future research, they argue, should shift toward longitudinal and revealed-preference designs, extend beyond capital cities, quantify grid-specific life-cycle emissions, and address battery circularity and socially inclusive transition pathways. Until then, the review’s core message stands: South Asia’s electric future will be decided less by battery chemistry than by the stability of fiscal signals and the carbon intensity of the wires that charge the region’s millions of two- and three-wheelers.

Subject of Research: Barriers, policy gaps and grid-dependent environmental outcomes of electric vehicle adoption in South Asia

Article Title: A scoping review of electric vehicle adoption barriers and policy gaps in South Asia

Article References: Sadik, M. S., Samia, M., Islam, R., & Ahsan, R. A. (2026). A scoping review of electric vehicle adoption barriers and policy gaps in South Asia. Discover Vehicles, 2(1), Article 36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44465-026-00040-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44465-026-00040-1

Keywords: electric vehicles, South Asia, scoping review, PRISMA-ScR, two-wheelers, three-wheelers, charging infrastructure, grid decarbonization, import tariffs, Nepal, Bhutan, policy stability