Picture a 55-tonne truck pulling into a cement plant at dawn, its trailer loaded, its diesel engine silent — because there is no diesel engine. It runs its route, returns to the yard, and instead of plugging in for an hour while the clock ticks, it drives through a swapping station and rolls out six minutes later with a full battery. That is the everyday reality Montra Electric is building for Indian freight — and the truck at the centre of it is the Rhino 5538 EV.
Montra Electric is the clean-mobility brand of the Murugappa Group, run through its electric medium and heavy commercial vehicle arm, IPLTech Electric. Its first truck, the Rhino 6×4 tractor-trailer, was India’s first heavy-duty electric truck — and the company says it has already clocked more than 1.2 crore kilometres in just two years on Indian roads. The Rhino 5538 EV 4×2 tractor-trailer, launched in September 2025, is the next step: a 55-tonne machine built for the long-haul freight corridors where diesel has ruled for decades.
The Montra Electric Rhino 5538 EV, India’s first PM E-DRIVE certified electric truck. (Image: Montra Electric)
Six minutes instead of an hour
The Rhino 5538 EV’s headline number is not its range or its power — it is six minutes. That is how long a full battery swap takes at Montra Electric’s swapping stations, against more than an hour on conventional fast charging. The stations use a 7+1 bay configuration with advanced automation and a drive-through layout, so a truck with its trailer attached moves through much like a toll plaza, and the company says a station can handle more than 160 swaps a day at peak utilisation. Controlled charging inside the station also extends battery life, turning the battery from a consumable into a managed asset.
Under the cab, the numbers are built for Indian freight: a 282 kWh LFP battery, 380 HP and 2,000 Nm of torque, with a range of nearly 198 km on a single charge under standard test conditions. A six-speed AMT transmission, a rugged chassis frame and compatibility with multiple trailer types make it a workhorse for steel and cement operations, and the truck is backed by a 10-year / 9 lakh km annual maintenance contract with a 95% uptime guarantee, advanced telematics and tailored financing.
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India’s first PM E-DRIVE certified electric truck
In January 2026, the Rhino 5538 EV became the first heavy-duty electric truck in India to receive certification under the Government of India’s PM E-DRIVE scheme — and Montra Electric delivered the first certified truck to UltraTech Cement, India’s largest cement company. The scheme carries a direct customer benefit of up to Rs 9.6 lakh per vehicle, and the certification turns the Rhino from a promising prototype into a commercially viable, policy-backed product.
The deliveries are now scaling. In July 2026, Montra Electric flagged off the first batch of Rhino 5538 EV trucks from its Manesar manufacturing facility in Haryana, and the company has announced a deployment of around 250 trucks with Wonder Cement across a 1,450-km corridor spanning Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat — a stretch the companies describe as India’s longest commercial electric freight corridor. The trucks will run the Nimbahera to Dahej Port and Nimbahera to Tuna Port routes, fully loaded on daily duty cycles, supported by 13 dedicated charging stations with 39 chargers. At full deployment, the fleet is expected to save 39,500 tonnes of CO2 a year.
A factory built for the transition
The trucks are built at Montra Electric’s eM&HCV facility in Manesar, which the company has tooled for volume: a new conveyor line with automated guided vehicles and, inaugurated alongside the Rhino 5538 EV launch, India’s first all-women, fully automated battery plant. It is a fitting detail for a company whose pitch is that electrification has to work as an industrial system — trucks, batteries, swapping infrastructure and service, all built together — rather than as a single clever vehicle.
The same thinking shows in the earliest deployments. Hindustan Zinc put IPLTech’s 55-tonne electric trucks to work at its mines, where the trucks charge from 20% to 100% in 90 minutes and have run for more than two years — proof, in one of the harshest duty cycles imaginable, that the economics already work where the trucks run hardest.
Montra Electric’s range now stretches beyond heavy trucks to electric three-wheelers, small commercial vehicles and tractors, but the Rhino is the flagship — the machine that has to prove electric freight can match diesel on the routes that keep India’s industry moving. With a certified truck, a six-minute swap and a 1,450-km corridor already running, the company is no longer asking whether electric trucks can handle long-haul freight. It is showing how fast fleets can scale them.
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