A delegation trip to New Delhi took place from 9th to 12th July 2019. The three-person delegation included Gerhild Roth from BMWi, Sieglinde Kaiser from DIN and Philipp Saueracker from DKE. The delegation trip took place as part of the German-Indian working group for quality infrastructure between BMWi and the Indian Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution (MoCAF&PD).
The visit to the Indian capital was organised and conducted by Global Project Quality Infrastructure (GPQI), which is executed by GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH – German Corporation for International Cooperation) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The visit continued the implementation of the bilateral fields of cooperation in standardisation, as already agreed in the 2019 work plan and signed on 18th January 2019 during the 6th annual meeting of the working group in Berlin.
During the delegation’s trip, there were meetings with representatives of the ministry, unions and German enterprises in situ. These dealt in particular with the current status of the ongoing cooperation projects and other opportunities for cooperation and market entry barriers for German enterprises in India. Furthermore there was an expert workshop on the subject of “Standardisation in electric mobility” and the first German-Indian standardisation forum.
Of particular importance for DKE was the meeting with representatives of IEEMA, VDE’s Indian counterpart. Both parties were interested in a strong collaboration and spoke about the possibility of reinforcing cooperation between the two organisations with a memorandum of understanding. IEEMA continued to show interest in heavily participating in the German-Indian working group.
In the expert workshop on “Standards for electric mobility”, India put its focus on two and three-wheeled electric vehicles. The results of the IEC ad-hoc group 81 on the subject of “Electric vehicles and charging infrastructure” were presented as an introduction. That was followed by the Germans’ input in the areas of “battery development” and “charging infrastructure”. It became clear that a focused technical exchange in small groups with Indian regulating authorities and German standardisation experts will be necessary.