Petrol or electric: the decision, with the arithmetic

Both work. This catalogue holds 53 petrol machines, 10 electric and one running on CNG, and the good ones in each group are genuinely good. What separates them is not build quality. It is a running cost gap of roughly ten to one, set against a range ceiling and a charging problem that petrol does not have.

So the decision turns on two facts about your life rather than about the machines: how far you ride on a normal day, and where the machine sleeps at night. The finder asks both, alongside your budget and how long you will keep it.

The catalogue records a running cost for every machine. The 10 electric ones sit between ₹0.20 and ₹0.22 per kilometre. The petrol median is ₹2.30, and the thirstiest machines here reach ₹4.20. Call the gap ₹2.10 a kilometre against the median.

That gap only becomes money when you multiply it by distance. At 30 km a day over 300 riding days — about 9,000 km a year — the median petrol machine burns roughly ₹21,000 and an electric one about ₹1,800, a saving near ₹19,000 a year. At 10 km a day the same sum gives about ₹6,900 against ₹600, so the saving falls to roughly ₹6,300 and the case weakens in proportion.

Per-kilometre cost is the cost of moving the machine. Insurance, service and tyres sit on top of it for both kinds, and what it costs to run takes those apart.

Electric usually costs more to buy. The cheapest electric machine here is the Ola S1 X at ₹95,000, against ₹75,000 for the cheapest machine of any kind, the Hero HF Deluxe, and ₹82,000 for two more — so at the bottom of the market the premium is ₹13,000 to ₹20,000. Further up it grows: the Simple Energy One at ₹1.5 lakh sits about ₹42,000 above the scooter median of ₹1.08 lakh.

To find out whether that premium comes back, divide it by the ₹2.10 you save on every kilometre. That gives a distance you can check against your own odometer.

The table is the whole financial argument. At 30 km a day almost any premium on offer here repays itself well inside the life of the machine. At 10 km a day a ₹40,000 premium may outlive your interest in the machine — which is why the finder asks how long you plan to keep it. If you have not set your ceiling yet, how much to spend works through it.

No electric machine in this catalogue exceeds 170 km of real range; that one is the Ola S1 Pro. The Simple Energy One reaches 160 km at ₹1.5 lakh, the cheapest — the Ola S1 X at ₹95,000 — does 110 km, and the shortest-legged of the ten, the TVS iQube, manages 90 km. Across the catalogue, range on a tank or a charge runs 90 km to 660 km with a median of 395, and the whole of the upper half of that spread is petrol.

A 170 km ceiling is not a commuting problem; at 30 km a day it is five days of riding, and you would plug in nightly anyway. It is a touring problem. A petrol machine refills in five minutes at any pump in the country, and planning a 300 km day around charging stops is a different hobby.

Treat every range figure as a ceiling rather than a promise. Real range falls with a pillion, with luggage, with hills, and with a battery that has done a few years of work.

This is the part that gets skipped in the showroom, and the part that most often makes electric the wrong answer. Nearly every electric two-wheeler in India is charged slowly, overnight, from an ordinary domestic socket. That is a question about your building, not about the machine.

1. 1

   Walk to where it will actually park

   Not the spot you would like. The real bay, at ten at night, in the rain. Stand in it.

2. 2

   Find the nearest socket you are permitted to use

   A socket belonging to the building is not a socket you may use. Society rules, a landlord and a shared meter are all real obstacles, and all cheaper to discover now.

3. 3

   Measure the cable run

   An extension lead trailing down a stairwell and across a common corridor is not a charging plan. Somebody will unplug it, and they will be right to.

4. 4

   Decide whether the machine goes to the socket, or the socket to the machine

   If you cannot leave it plugged in where it parks, the battery has to travel. Ask whether it comes out, what it weighs, and whether you would carry that up three flights every night in August.

5. 5

   Check what public charging near you really is

   Ride to the nearest point and look at it. Treat public charging as a bonus, never as the plan.

A reader in a flat with no socket near the parking is the clearest case where electric is still the wrong answer, even when the arithmetic above is overwhelming. Petrol asks nothing of your building.

This project scores service reach from 0 to 100 as editorial judgement rather than measurement, and the scores here spread from 25 to 99. As a pattern rather than a verdict on any one brand, the newer electric makers generally sit lower than the long-established petrol ones: fewer workshops, thinner spares, a longer wait when something uncommon fails.

How much that matters depends on you. In a metro with a dealer nearby it is a mild inconvenience; outside one it is the difference between a two-day repair and a two-week one, and if the machine earns you money a day off the road is lost income. The finder re-ranks everything once you say how much weight to put on it.

The catalogue also scores resale 35 to 93, again as editorial judgement rather than measured market data, and resale on electric is the least settled number in this market: the value of a used machine is largely the value of its used battery, and there is not yet much of a track record to price that against.

Purchase incentives and road tax on electric two-wheelers vary by state and change often, sometimes part way through a year. There is no national number worth quoting, and a figure you read on a forum may be a year out of date. Check your own state transport department, then ask the dealer for the current on-road break-up in writing. Catalogue prices are indicative and vary by city and variant too.

The rule itself is short. Buy electric when all four of these hold.

1. You can plug it in where it sleeps, on a socket you are allowed to use, without an extension lead across a corridor.
2. Your longest regular ride sits comfortably inside the real range — under about 70 km for the shortest-legged machines here, under about 130 km for the 170 km one.
3. You ride far enough each year that the premium repays itself well before you sell.
4. You are content with the service network you can actually reach, not the one on the brochure map.

If all four hold, electric is the cheaper machine and usually the better one for the job. If the first fails, nothing else matters. And if you land on petrol, the next question is how much engine — usually less than the showroom suggests, and worked through in what engine size do you need .