The Centre is weighing a new advanced electrified vehicles category to bring large-battery hybrids and range-extenders into a cleaner regulatory framework. The move is meant to align motor vehicle rules with CAFE-III norms and give clearer recognition to battery-heavy cars that can run meaningfully on electricity.

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India's clean-car policy may soon get a new label, and it could reshape how automakers position hybrids and battery-heavy vehicles in the market. The Centre is examining an umbrella category called advanced electrified vehicles, or AEVs, to capture cars that rely more heavily on battery power than conventional hybrids, according to The Hindu BusinessLine .

The move is being discussed alongside the government's broader shift towards a multi-powertrain strategy for greener mobility, rather than a pure battery-electric play. Officials familiar with the thinking say the proposal surfaced after the third phase of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy norms , or CAFE-III , was notified on September 29.

The immediate trigger is a mismatch between the fuel-efficiency rules and the motor vehicle framework. CAFE-III already recognises range-extended electric vehicles, or REEVs, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs, for compliance purposes, but the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989 , do not define them with equal clarity, government sources told the publication.

That gap has created a regulatory oddity. Only pure electric vehicles have a clear definition under the current rules, while REEVs are effectively folded into the PHEV bucket.

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