Policy
Pakistan's NEV Policy 2025-30, read as a driver
What the New Energy Vehicle Policy changes for an EV buyer in Pakistan: the 30 percent target, Rs 9 billion in subsidies, and the Rs 39.70 charging tariff.
Pakistan's New Energy Vehicle Policy 2025-30 is a fifty-page document about industrial strategy, and almost none of it is written for the person actually deciding whether to buy an electric car. This is that document read the other way round: what changes for the driver, what changes for their electricity bill, and which parts are a target rather than a thing that exists.
The four numbers worth knowing
30 percent of new vehicles sold by 2030 should be electric. That is the headline target, and it covers everything with wheels — the two- and three-wheelers doing the heavy lifting on the number, not just cars. The underlying vehicle target is about 2.2 million new energy vehicles on the road by 2030.
Rs 9 billion in subsidies was allocated for the 2025-26 fiscal year, out of a policy-period commitment that runs well past Rs 100 billion. Most of it goes to two- and three-wheelers, where a subsidy of Rs 50,000-90,000 is a third of the purchase price rather than a rounding error.
Rs 39.70 per kWh is the capped commercial rate for charging-station electricity, down from about Rs 71 — a 44 percent cut, notified by the Power Division. That is what the charge point operator pays the grid, not what you pay at the plug, but it is the input cost that sets the retail price.
3,000 charging stations nationwide by 2030, with roughly 40 new stations about every 105 km along the highways, and the National Highway Authority tasked with a first phase of 40 Level 3 DC fast chargers on the motorways and the N-5.
Today, 156 public chargers are listed on this site across 34 cities, 78 of them DC fast. That is the honest gap between the plan and the map. You can see exactly where it falls on the motorway route pages, which mark every stretch longer than 300 km without a DC fast charger.
What it does to the price of the car
Two tax lines matter more than the subsidy for anyone buying a car:
- Sales tax at 1 percent on electric vehicles, against 17-18 percent on an equivalent petrol car. On a Rs 9 million car that is not a discount, it is a different price bracket.
- Reduced customs duty on imported EVs and on charging equipment, with the duty relief tapering as local assembly comes online — which is the point of the taper. BYD's Karachi-area plant is scheduled to build its first locally assembled car in 2026, and the policy is written to make the imported version progressively less attractive than the assembled one.
Registration and token tax relief varies by province. Punjab, Sindh and KP have all waived or cut registration fees for EVs at different times; check the current position with the excise department in your province rather than with a dealer, because the notifications change more often than the showroom material does.
What it does to the cost of running it
The charging tariff is where the policy touches you every week rather than once. Three rates are in play:
| Where | Rate | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Home, off-peak | Rs 23.57/kWh subsidised | S.R.O. 279(I)/2026 off-peak residential |
| Charging station input | Rs 39.70/kWh capped | What the operator pays, not you |
| Public DC fast | market | Set by the operator, above their input cost |
A full charge of a 60 kWh battery at the off-peak home rate is about Rs 1,414. The same battery at a public fast charger costs multiples of that, which is the normal shape of EV ownership everywhere: home charging is the cheap default, fast charging is what you buy on a long drive. We break the arithmetic down properly in what it costs to charge an EV in Pakistan.
What is a target and what is real
It is worth being blunt about which parts of the policy have happened:
Real now. The tax treatment. The charging tariff cut. The e-bike and e-rickshaw subsidy schemes, which are disbursing. The requirement that new buildings above a certain size include charging provision, which is in the building regulations.
Announced, partly built. The highway charging programme. Every motorway in Pakistan now has at least some DC fast charging, but the spacing is nothing like every 105 km, and the gaps are concentrated exactly where a long drive needs them least — see the Lahore to Karachi route for the clearest example.
Still a plan. Battery swapping standards. Vehicle-to-grid. The 2,000-plus stations that would have to be built between now and 2030 to hit the target — roughly two a day, every day, for the rest of the policy period.
None of that makes the policy unserious. It makes it a policy, which is a statement of intent with money attached. For a driver, the practical reading is that the cost side has already moved in your favour and the infrastructure side is moving, unevenly, and you should plan a long trip around the chargers that exist rather than the ones on the roadmap.