The adoption of novel transport options such as ethanol blended fuel (E85) vehicles, electric vehicles (EV), and compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles to replace conventional petrol (gasoline) and diesel vehicles is not yet well understood. This work develops a system dynamics (SD) model to study the adoption of these novel options for private transport needs in India as a function of technology performance, cost, and other sector specific features. For EVs, expected growth in battery technology and the inconvenience due to lack of charging infrastructure are considered. Since ethanol production sector is still scaling up, model captures the inter-relationships between demand, supply, producer’s profit, and investment in capacity increase. The growth in compressed biogas (CBG) plants and inconvenience due to lack of gas refilling stations are considered for CNG vehicles. For petrol and diesel, the effect of demand on consumer prices and its effect on ownership cost is modelled. A multi-multinominal logit model is used to capture selection of transport option as a function of total ownership costs. Model simulations are performed till 2050, and quantify the adoption trends as well as resulting total greenhouse gas emissions considering life cycle perspective for all the technological options. Simulation results show that E85, EVs and CNG vehicles would constitute 34 % of total private vehicle stock by 2050, resulting in 668.75 million tonnes of CO emissions. The targets set by the government for EV adoption and blending rate of ethanol will not be achieved, and significant improvement is costs and infrastructure are needed. Various policy options to improve adoption of new options are explored, identifying the technology development targets. Graphic abstract Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10098-022-02398-8.

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