AIS-156, IS 16046 and BIS: A Plain-English Guide to Battery Certification in India

Certification tends to be discovered rather than planned. A team designs a product, freezes it, and then finds that the testing queue is months long, that a redesign is needed to pass, and that the launch date was never realistic. The way to avoid that is to know the map before you start walking.

This is an orientation guide, not legal or regulatory advice. Confirm current requirements with a certification body and check for amendments before you commit a schedule.

AIS-156 — electric two- and three-wheelers

AIS-156 is the automotive standard covering electric power train safety and the Rechargeable Electrical Energy Storage System for L-category vehicles: two-wheelers, three-wheelers and quadricycles. If you are building a battery for an electric scooter, motorcycle, e-rickshaw or e-auto sold in India, this is your standard. Four-wheelers fall under AIS-038 Rev 2 instead.

The standard's scope was significantly widened by amendments introduced in 2022, implemented in two phases from December 2022 and March 2023. Those amendments brought in, among other things, IPx7 water ingress requirements and a thermal propagation assessment — the requirement that a single cell going into thermal runaway must not immediately endanger the rider, with a defined warning interval.

Testing is extensive and destructive: vibration, thermal shock and cycling, mechanical shock and drop, fire resistance, external short circuit protection, overcharge and over-discharge protection, over-temperature protection, and the ingress and propagation requirements. Testing is carried out at approved agencies including ARAI, ICAT and CIRT, and the queue at those agencies is a real constraint on your timeline.

BIS and IS 16046 — cells and portable batteries

Separate from the automotive route, lithium-ion cells and batteries fall under the BIS Compulsory Registration Scheme against IS 16046, which is the Indian adoption of IEC 62133. Part 2 covers lithium systems. Registration requires testing at a BIS-recognised laboratory followed by registration, after which products must carry the standard mark and registration number. Manufacturing, selling or importing covered products without it is not permitted.

The practical point for a pack builder is that the cells you buy and the pack you sell may sit under different regimes, and an import of unregistered cells will be stopped regardless of what your pack is certified against.

Traction packs and the IS 16893 series

For traction battery packs and systems used in electric road vehicles, the IS 16893 series applies alongside the automotive AIS requirements. Which parts apply depends on your product's configuration and route to market, and this is exactly the question to put to a certification body early rather than to assume.

Drones

UAVs operate under the Drone Rules 2021 and the type certification framework administered through DGCA and the Quality Council of India. Battery safety requirements form part of the type certification scheme for the aircraft rather than sitting as a standalone battery approval, which means your pack's compliance evidence is consumed by the airframe's certification file. Build the documentation as though someone else will need to submit it, because they will.

Energy storage systems

Stationary storage in India draws on IEC-derived standards adopted as IS — for system safety, for grid interconnection, and for the enclosure and fire protection of the installation — with the applicable set depending on scale, location and whether the system is grid-connected. Additionally, projects taking Viability Gap Funding must now satisfy a minimum 20% domestic content requirement, which is a procurement condition rather than a safety standard but which shapes sourcing just as firmly.

Transport: UN 38.3

Independent of everything above, any lithium battery that moves — by road, sea or air — must satisfy UN 38.3 transport testing: altitude simulation, thermal cycling, vibration, shock, external short circuit, impact or crush, overcharge and forced discharge. There is no exemption for prototypes being shipped to a customer for evaluation.

Planning it properly

Identify the applicable standards at concept stage, not at design freeze. Book test slots early; capacity at Indian test agencies is genuinely constrained. Budget for at least one failure and retest — first-time passes on the full AIS-156 battery are not the norm. Build the design to the standard rather than testing a finished design against it, since the propagation and ingress requirements in particular are architectural, not something that can be added at the end. And keep the test reports, because your customers' certifications will depend on yours.