India's LNG-truck fleet grew 75% in 2025 — and still landed at roughly a third of what the industry expected, because unlike China, the government offers no transport-sector incentive to close the gap with diesel.
Energy · LNG · Transport & Logistics
India's LNG Trucks Grew 75% in 2025 — About a Third of What the Industry Expected
Revised
· v1.0.0 · what changed
India's fleet of LNG-powered trucks grew 75% in 2025 — a real number, not a rounding error. It is also, by the industry's own earlier expectations, a disappointment: forecasts from major players and Vahan registration estimates going into the year pointed to roughly three times that growth. Instead, some retail LNG stations have shut for lack of truck traffic to serve, and state-run refiners paused expansion plans in 2026. The gap between "growing fast" and "growing as planned" comes down to one structural difference from the market India's own industry keeps pointing to: China.
The Fleet Grew. The Target Moved Further Away
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| LNG trucks on Indian roads | 747 | ~1,309 |
| Year-on-year growth | — | +75% |
| Growth industry expected going into 2025 | — | ~3× (not met) |
| Retail LNG stations | — | Some shut for lack of demand |
| State refiner expansion plans | — | Paused in 2026 |
The 75% headline number is genuine growth, not stagnation. What makes it a miss is the base case it is measured against: a market that industry players themselves expected to roughly triple, not grow by three-quarters. A fleet that fails to hit its own industry's forecast puts pressure on exactly the retail infrastructure — LNG dispensing stations — that was built ahead of demand rather than behind it, which is the direct mechanism behind the 2025 station closures and the 2026 refiner pause.
Why China Got to 30% and India Didn't
LNG-powered trucks captured close to 30% of China's heavy-duty truck sales in 2024, up from below 10% in late 2023 — a shift driven by a widening LNG-to-diesel price spread, tighter emission standards, and subsidies specifically aimed at swapping out aging diesel trucks for LNG ones. India has none of the third lever: industry sources describe the Government of India as offering no transport-sector incentive for LNG trucks at all, leaving adoption to run on fuel-cost economics alone.
Who's Still Expanding, and Who Isn't
The pause is not universal. State-run refiners have held back on retail expansion, but private players — Ultra Gas and Think Gas among them — are still building out, using corridor-first strategies (dedicated freight lanes with guaranteed traffic) rather than the broader station-first rollout that left some outlets under-utilised. That split is itself informative: it suggests the underperformance is less about LNG trucking being a bad bet everywhere, and more about which rollout model, and which route, actually clears the demand bar without a subsidy to help.
Sources: "India's LNG-powered trucks and fuel retail underperformed in 2025," Business Standard (Jan 2026), also syndicated via Essar; "Assessing the Viability of LNG Trucks for India's Clean Goals," IEEFA; on China's 2024 LNG-truck share, "LNG truck sales impacting Chinese road diesel demand," Wood Mackenzie, and "Heavy trucking unlikely to materially increase China's LNG imports," IEEFA (May 2025); on the 2025-26 stall in China's LNG-trucking growth, "Surging electric truck sales stall China's LNG trucking boom," IEEFA. TCO and NOx findings per this site's own LNG Trucks Cost About What Diesel Does.
- v1.0.0 — 14 September 2026 — first published.
About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.
