Government has no plans for EV port standardisation of two wheelers

The government has no plans for EV port standardisation for two-wheelers. That’s the word coming in from the Minister of State for Heavy Industries, Krishan Pal Gurjar, who oversees India's automotive industry.

He was answering a query in the ongoing Parliament Winter Session, yesterday, on being asked whether the government had plans to develop common charging platforms for electric two-wheelers. A common charging platform is expected to increase the charging bandwidth for EV two-wheeler customers.

The Minister of State for Heavy Industries Krishan Pal Gurjar’s response was related to a question by Members of Parliament in the Lok Sabha. "The government is not planning to mandate standardized charging ports for electric scooters,” he added.

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) earlier in October approved the country’s first-ever indigenously developed AC and DC Combined Charging connector developed by Ather Energy as the standard for light electric vehicles as it had aimed to become the benchmark globally for LEVs.

Ather which has currently 1600 charging stations and plans to add another 900 by March 2024, is currently in talks with other manufacturers for the adoption of its charging connector as the standard.

Swapnil Jain Co-Founder of Ather Energy had earlier told Autocar Professional that they were to approach the Government of India to make a common charging port 'mandatory' from its current form of 'voluntary' compliance to boost consumers' bandwidth to charge their scooters anywhere.

Currently, every OEM has to put their independent charging infrastructure limiting the ability of other electric scooter users to use existing charging stations. "But with one standard all the OEMs can use the same standard, you can have a very high level of compatibility between two OEMs," Jain had noted.

India faces a unique situation in the two-wheeler segment where, unlike the passenger electric car, OEMS have migrated to the CCS2 charging station, each OEM has developed its proprietary charging station software limiting consumers' ability to charge at competitor charging stations.

 With the Minister of Heavy Industries providing clarification, there are no plans to develop a universal charging port standard, it is unlikely that Ola's proprietary Hyperchargers designed for charging Ola Electric scooters will be available for Ather Energy's users, as its open-source charging standard is also shared by Hero Vida V1 e-scooters or other OEM charging platforms.

Similarly, EV premium superbike Ultraviolette’s e-motorcycles are only compatible with charging connectors using IEC 62196-6, an international charging standard.

To resolve the EV ports charging issue, Chennai-based electric superbike maker Raptee has decided to move to the CS2 common public fast charging standard used by passenger cars to ensure that the battery of e-bikes can be charged from any external charger available, said company Co-founder & CEO Dinesh Arjun.