Standards Development

Scope

This part of IEC 62196 is applicable to vehicle couplers with pins and contact -tubes of standardised configuration, herein also referred to as “accessories”, intended for use in electric vehicle conductive charging systems which incorporate control means, with rated operating voltage and current:

a) up to 240 V DC and rated current up to 100 A

b) up to 250 V AC and rated current up to 32 A.

These accessories are intended to be used for a DC interfaces and combined AC/DC interfaces of the conductive charging system according to IEC 61851 series (with suitable amendments).

This part applies to the vehicle couplers to be used in an ambient temperature of between -30 °C and +55 °C.

These vehicle couplers are intended to be connected only to cables with copper or copper - alloy conductors

Purpose

In many regions around the world such as India, China, Southeast Asia, South America, and parts of Africa, two-wheelers are the main form of transportation, largely because of limited infrastructure and the need for affordable mobility. The total number of 2Ws sold in the world in 2024 exceeded 60 Million units (61.8M). To achieve decarbonization of transport, most countries are targeting 80% of all 2Ws sold in 2030 to be electric 2Ws. For example, India has a target of 22 Million E2W to be sold in 2030 (80 % of the total 2W market in India).

To achieve this penetration of Electric 2Ws, a robust and interoperable charging infrastructure needs to be built that caters to all forms of 2Ws - Motorcycles, Scooters, Micromobility, etc. This necessitates that relevant standards are built for charging of E 2W or Light Electric vehicles. However, as the global transition towards electric vehicles from traditional internal combustion engines progressed, the primary focus of research and development remained on four -wheeled vehicles.

This inclination was expected, given that many countries t hat initially prioritized electrification had a higher prevalence of four-wheeled vehicles. Consequently, efforts extended to establishing standards for vehicle charging standards for EV4W – like CCS2 and CHAdeMO.

The standards and the infrastructure that is built for E4Ws is not suitable for Light Electric Vehicles (LEVs like 2W and 3W) due to:

1. Size and cost of the connectors that are built for 400kW+ power whereas the requirement for LEVs is ~24kW of power. LEVs (The average price of a 2W is ~1000 USD in markets like India, China and South East Asia).

2. The infrastructure for 4W charging is 400V to 800V, but the requirement for Light Electric charging is between 30V to 240V.

This very clearly necessitates standards that are required to solve the use cases of LEVs; which specifically target: 

1. Voltage levels of 30V to 240V DC.

2. Power levels upto 24kW 

3. Cost of the connector is less than 10 USD.

4. Combined AC and DC charging through a single connector. 4Ws have CCS2 as a standard which allows the flexibility of having an onboard charger with charging done through an AC socket, and also the ability to supply DC current to the EV through a DC charger (for fast charging). There is no equivalent combined charging connector for 2Ws. This is creating friction for adoption of EV 2W, especially in motorcycles, which do not have storage space in the vehicle to store an AC to DC charger (in the scenario whe re there is only a DC connector). Hence, we need a charging connector which can support onboard charging by transmitting AC current, and fast DC charging by transmitting DC current. The new LEV specific standards (IEC 61851-3 and IEC 62196-6) are DC only, which do not allow for an on-board charger (AC to DC conversion happening inside the EV), which is not conducive for adoption for EV 2Ws.

There is a lacuna in global charging connector standards that are tailored for the above.

This standard will help the adoption of Light Electric vehicle adoption across the globe and solves for a gap in international standards