From grease to gigabytes: Why EV makers are racing to rewrite the service playbook

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.New Delhi: Situated 33 kilometers from the busy streets of Pune is Chakan, home to automobile manufacturers and their suppliers. One company in this area is electric bus maker Eka Mobility.

Here, a team of young executives remains glued to their screens, looking at data relayed from hundreds of buses plying across the country. “We can track the status and health of each of these buses.

If even one stops functioning, we can immediately respond by diagnosing it quickly,” one of the executives explained.Situations range from critical breakdowns to customer complaints about range. A customer once called, complaining of a sharp drop in the range of the bus he bought.

Eka Mobility’s team diagnosed that the vehicle’s air conditioner was in use for a long time—even when the vehicle was idle and parked.The company’s network centre, which mimics a ‘war room’, harnesses one of the biggest advantages of electric vehicles (EVs)—the software at the heart of these machines.Eka Mobility’s attempt to check its vehicles, diagnose problems, and quickly deploy a team to fix issues underlines a key question troubling every other auto executive: how will such vehicles be serviced at scale? The answer could well determine whether India’s EV revolution sustains or stalls.Unlike internal combustion engine (ICE) counterparts, EVs cannot rely on decades of institutional knowledge spread across formal and informal networks in the country. EVs are a relatively new phenomenon—while electric two-wheelers gained popularity since 2021, electric cars and buses started gaining mass acceptance only around 2023.In the financial year 2026, total EV sales across all categories crossed 2.4 million, compared to 1.9 million the