Delhi Cabinet Clears EV Policy 2026: Full Tax Waiver & 2028 Petrol Two-Wheeler Phase-Out

India’s capital is echoing earlier disruptive clean-air moves such as California’s 1990 Zero-Emission Vehicle mandate and London’s post-1956 Clean Air Act shift away from domestic coal: each set a hard legal date that forced industry to re-tool rather than rely on voluntary adoption. Delhi’s policy rides three long-running currents—the steady fall in battery costs (~90 % since 2010), India’s constitutional pressure to protect citizens’ health, and urban voters’ growing intolerance of PM2.5 levels that routinely hit five times WHO limits. By shutting the door on new fossil two-wheelers, which make up two-thirds of Delhi’s fleet, the city is gambling that infrastructure and supply chains will mature fast enough to avoid the backlash that derailed China’s 2008–2011 electric-bike bans in several provinces. If the deadlines stick, historians may mark 2026 as the moment Indian megacities began the irreversible pivot away from internal-combustion mobility—much as the 1912 switch from coal to oil reshaped the Royal Navy—altering oil demand, urban design and health outcomes over the next century; if they fail, it will serve as yet another reminder that policy ambition without execution is just aspiration.