"Electric vehicle" gets used as a catch-all, but it covers four genuinely different kinds of drivetrain. Knowing which one you're looking at changes what questions are worth asking — a BEV owner cares about range and charging; an HEV owner never plugs in at all.
Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV)
This is what most people mean by "EV," and it's the only type this site otherwise tracks in its vehicle database. A BEV has no engine, no fuel tank, and no tailpipe — it runs entirely on a rechargeable battery pack driving one or more electric motors.
How it works: the battery stores DC power; an inverter converts it to AC to drive the motor; pressing the accelerator sends a signal to the motor controller, which adjusts the motor's frequency (and so its speed). Lifting off the accelerator or braking runs the motor as a generator instead, feeding some energy back into the battery — regenerative braking.
Because there's no engine parasitic loss or fuel combustion inefficiency, BEVs convert the highest share of stored energy into actual movement of any of the four types. Every car and scooter in our EV catalog — Tata's Nexon EV and Punch EV, Mahindra's BE 6 and XUV400, MG's Windsor EV and Comet EV, and the rest — is a BEV.
Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV)
A PHEV has both a combustion engine and a battery large enough to plug in and charge externally (unlike a regular hybrid, below). It genuinely drives on electricity alone for a limited distance — typically 40-80 km depending on the model — then the engine takes over once the battery is depleted, after which it behaves much like a regular hybrid.
This makes a PHEV the middle ground: cleaner and cheaper to run than a hybrid for short, chargeable trips, but without the range anxiety of a pure BEV on longer ones, since the engine is always there as backup. India doesn't classify PHEVs as pure EVs for most state incentive schemes (see EV Policies by State in India) — the tax and subsidy benefits generally apply to BEVs specifically.
Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)
A regular hybrid also pairs an engine with a battery and electric motor, but it never plugs in. The engine itself recharges the battery as you drive (and via regenerative braking), and the two power sources work together — sometimes the engine drives the wheels directly, sometimes the electric motor assists or takes over briefly at low speed.
Of the four types, HEVs are the least efficient in pure electric terms, since they still depend on the engine to keep the battery charged. Their real advantage over a plain petrol car is around-town fuel economy from the electric assist and regenerative braking, not an ability to run emissions-free — which is also why India's EV-specific incentives (road tax exemption, purchase subsidy) generally don't extend to HEVs.
Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV)
The rarest type on Indian roads by far. An FCEV still uses an electric motor, but instead of storing energy in a large battery, it generates electricity onboard from a hydrogen fuel cell stack, converting stored hydrogen gas directly into electricity (with water vapour as the only tailpipe output) — hence the alternate name "zero-emission vehicle."
FCEVs need a hydrogen refuelling network to be practical, which barely exists in India today; Toyota trialled a Mirai FCEV program with the Indian government on a pilot basis, but there's no retail FCEV market here as of this writing. If a spec sheet mentions "fuel cell," it isn't the same technology as the BEVs on this site, even though both are commonly called "electric."
Quick comparison
| | Plugs in? | Has an engine? | Runs on electricity alone? | |---|---|---|---| | BEV | Yes | No | Always | | PHEV | Yes | Yes | For a limited range, then hybrid mode | | HEV | No | Yes | Only briefly, engine-charged | | FCEV | No (refuels with hydrogen) | No (fuel cell, not combustion) | Always |
Efficiency, in terms of how much of the stored energy actually reaches the wheels, generally ranks BEV highest, then PHEV, then HEV — FCEVs sit closer to BEVs on this measure but lose some energy converting hydrogen to electricity onboard.
Source note: The drivetrain descriptions above draw on the classification used by NITI Aayog's e-AMRIT portal, the Government of India's official EV information platform, rewritten here in our own words with India-specific examples from our own catalog rather than reproduced from theirs.