India?s EV transition slowed by poor coordination, not lack of tech or vision: Study

EV programs at legacy OEMs are being delayed by up to 24 months, not because of regulatory hurdles or capital shortages, but due to breakdowns in coordination, bandwidth, and supplier alignment. In short: the machine is running, but the gears are grinding. Legacy structures can’t handle parallel programmesIndia’s auto industry is facing a transition dilemma of how to build the future without pausing the present. Most legacy automakers continue to run ICE and EV programs in parallel, often with shared engineering, validation, and procurement resources. These overlapping structures, designed for incremental development are now expected to deliver transformational change. Also Read : India will have 123 million electric vehicles on its roads by 2032: Study The result is a deeply fragmented execution chain. Vector’s data shows that over 60 per cent of Tier-1s are engaged in more than 10 programs simultaneously, across multiple OEMs, with minimal visibility on volume forecasts or design maturity. The consequences? Chronic rework, late-stage design changes, and delayed product readiness. “For many OEMs, the same engineering bandwidth is stretched across both ICE and EV. And where dedicated EV teams do exist, they’re still operating on legacy systems not built for the pace or complexity of today’s product cycles,” said Ravindra Patki, Managing Partner at Vector Consulting Group. Suppliers are struggling in the darkWhile OEMs wrestle with parallel priorities, Tier-1 suppliers are being pushed to deliver faster, cheaper, and with less clarity. The study found that more than 70 per cent of Tier-1s experience last-minute design freezes, driven by poor coordination upstream. This eats into margins and introduces risk, particularly since the suppliers now have to co-develop new EV architectures such as power electronics, battery management units, and software stacks. The partnership is still fairly transactional. Suppliers are often brought in at the last minute, once program goals and specifications are set, with little opportunity for design feedback or process compatibility. Vector argues that unless this model evolves into true co-development, engineering capacity will continue to be the bottleneck in India’s EV transition. Startups are fast, but not immuneEV startups, free from ICE legacies, appear better positioned—but their speed often masks structural gaps. As per the study, most startups promise over promise the launch timelines and rely on OTA fixes post launch to cover engineering deficits. Though this strategy enables quick iteration, it also means greater cost of quality, brand reputation exposure, and disruption with suppliers, who are typically left to scramble to retrofit or revalidate alterations. “The startup model prizes speed over stability,” Patki observed. “But unless that speed is backed by structured execution and supplier alignment, it’s not sustainable at scale.” Where the Model Breaks DownVector’s study identifies three critical points where India’s automotive execution model is breaking down. The first challenge is the persistence of internal silos within OEMs—engineering, sourcing, and quality continue to operate independently and without integrated collaboration, leading to duplication of efforts and miscommunication. The second challenge is a failure to engage suppliers early in the third phase of the process. Too many suppliers are engaged late in changing the design and are required to rework decisions made in development while taking the cost and risk that comes with redoing the work downstream. The third challenge occurs in program tracking itself, with product maturity still measured through milestone checklists and not through a reliable, objective, real-time, measurable indication of readiness. Also Read : India can save over ₹9.17 lakh crore on its oil import bill by shifting to electric mobility. Know more To address these challenges, the report recommends a complete rethinking of how OEMs and suppliers operate together. It recommends setting up dedicated EV program teams that are structurally separate from ICE operations, thereby eliminating capacity and priority conflicts. It also calls for the implementation of real-time product maturity dashboards tools that track engineering progress across functions and partners, in one shared system. Another key suggestion is to institutionalise joint execution reviews, where OEMs and suppliers routinely evaluate project health well before the point of delivery. Finally, Vector emphasises the need for capacity-linked planning, where engineering bandwidth is treated as a core resource planned and protected rather than stretched reactively. Ultimately, the report argues that the solution isn’t to simply hire more engineers or push harder on timelines. It’s to build a smarter, more collaborative execution system, one designed to handle the complexity and speed of India’s EV transformation. In essence, the solution lies not in hiring more engineers or rushing the timeline—but in designing a better execution system, end to end. Execution will decide the winnersThe shift to electric mobility is not just a product challenge rather it’s an organisational one. As Patki summarised, “The winners of this decade won’t be the ones with the best EV concept or the most aggressive launch target. They’ll be the ones who can launch, scale, and improve reliably and repeatedly.” For an industry at the crossroads of disruption and opportunity, that means moving beyond old habits. Not just building EVs—but building new systems that can deliver EVs, at speed, with scale, and with fewer surprises. The transition is no longer just about batteries and platforms. It’s about execution and India’s auto industry is now learning that the hard way. Check out Upcoming EV Cars in India, Upcoming EV Bikes in India. First Published Date: 19 Jun 2025, 09:00 AM IST
Source: hindustantimes.com