Expansion of German-Indian cooperation and exchange regarding future standardisation issues

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.

The German Standardization Roadmap Electric Mobility 2020

represents the current standardisation activities in the field of electric mobility and compiles the current state-of-the-art, in particular, with respect to safety, vehicle technology and charging interfaces.

• Wired charging
• Wireless charging of electric vehicles
• Charging with higher charging capacities
• Information and communication technologies

The first German-Indian standardisation forum saw new cooperation opportunities and current topics in standardisation be developed in multiple workshop groups. It was decided to strengthen the collaboration at the international level through partnership agreements and early exchanges regarding new standardisation projects from both parties. Furthermore the matter of how collaboration on approaches for raising awareness around standardisation could be expanded, particularly in small and medium-sized enterprises, was discussed.

The interactions with the stakeholders, in particular those from German businesses, made it possible to revise the composition and prioritisation of relevant topics of cooperation of the working group. Moreover it was again confirmed that the subjects of the greatest interest for both parties are electric mobility, automobiles, Industry 4.0, data privacy, cybersecurity and electronic devices. The inclusion of new subjects, such as artificial intelligence, intelligent agriculture, intelligent transport systems and recycling economy, will be examined by GPQI India and discussed with German experts by the beginning of 2020 – ready for when the 7^th annual meeting of the German-Indian working group takes place.

The delegation’s visit showed that the implementation of the 2019 work plan is on schedule and that the project has an established network from the worlds of politics and business in both countries at its disposal to continue to gain concrete results. Furthermore it became clear that workshops and smaller exchange programmes such as round tables are suitable methods of encouraging and thus maintaining an interactive exchange between both parties. For this reason it was decided to organise sector-specific workshops and exchange measures as part of the working group’s next annual meeting.