If you’ve bought an electric two-wheeler or three-wheeler in India any time after 2023, there’s a good chance the sticker on its battery pack quietly mentions “AIS-156.” Most riders never notice it. But for battery manufacturers, those five characters represent months of redesign, lakhs of rupees in testing, and a hard line between staying in business and being pushed out of the market. AIS-156 isn’t a formality — it’s the reason today’s EV batteries are dramatically safer than the ones that caught fire on Indian roads in 2022.
Why AIS-156 Exists
The story behind AIS-156 begins with a string of unsettling headlines. In the summer of 2022, several electric scooters across India caught fire — some while parked, some while charging, a few while riding. The incidents were widely reported, and they shook public confidence in electric mobility at exactly the moment India needed people to trust it.
In response, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways set up an expert committee, drawing on institutions like ARCI and IISc, to figure out what had gone wrong at the cell, pack, and battery-management-system level. Their findings became Amendment 3 to AIS-156, rolled out in two phases — Phase 1 from December 2022 and the more demanding Phase 2 from March 2023. What had been a fairly light-touch standard turned into one of the strictest battery safety regulations in the world.
What Manufacturers Actually Have to Build
AIS-156 isn’t a single test — it’s a checklist that touches every layer of the battery, from the individual cell to the charger in the box. Here’s what a manufacturer has to get right before a battery pack can legally be sold in an EV:
1. Water and Dust Protection (IP67)
Every battery pack must be certified IP67, meaning it can survive being submerged in water and resist dust ingress. This matters more in India than almost anywhere else — vehicles get washed by hand, driven through flooded streets, and parked outdoors through monsoon season.
2. Cell-Level Testing
It’s not enough to test the finished pack. Individual cells must be tested and certified separately under IS 16893 (Parts 2 and 3) at a NABL-accredited lab, covering things like thermal stability and how the cell behaves under stress before it’s ever assembled into a battery.
3. Thermal Propagation Control
This is the heart of the fire-prevention requirement. If one cell in a pack fails and starts heating up, the pack must be designed so that failure doesn’t spread to neighbouring cells. Manufacturers also need an audio-visual warning system that alerts the rider before a thermal event becomes dangerous.
4. Smart, Communicative BMS
The Battery Management System has to be “communicative,” meaning it constantly monitors temperature, voltage, and current, and can flag abnormal behaviour in real time. Phase 2 requires at least four temperature sensors and EMC testing of the BMS under AIS-004, so it doesn’t interfere with — or get interfered with by — other electronics on the vehicle.
5. Vibration and Mechanical Strength
Indian roads test more than just batteries. Potholes, speed breakers, and uneven surfaces subject a pack to constant mechanical stress, so it must be vibration-tested to prove it won’t develop internal faults over years of daily use.
6. Authorised, Controlled Charging
To stop riders from using unauthorised chargers — a common cause of failures — packs must support secure charging protocols and include an earth-leakage detection charger and, in later versions, a pressure-release valve that works much like the one in a pressure cooker, safely venting excess internal pressure before it becomes a hazard.
7. Getting Certified
None of this is self-declared. Testing happens at accredited facilities such as ARAI in Pune, and only after every requirement is verified does a manufacturer receive AIS-156 certification — first Phase 1, then the more rigorous Phase 2. Only then can the battery legally go into a vehicle sold in India.
Why It Matters for Buyers
For the average customer, AIS-156 is invisible — until it isn’t. A certified battery is one that has been engineered, tested, and proven to handle Indian conditions: heat, water, rough roads, and the occasional rider who plugs in a charger that didn’t come in the box. When a manufacturer talks about AIS-156 compliance, they’re really saying their product survived a battery of tests specifically designed around the failures that shook the industry in 2022.
About Kushmanda Power and Bharatcell
This is also the story behind Kushmanda Power,that manufactures lithium-ion batteries under its Bharatcell brand. Kushmanda Power was built on a fairly simple conviction: that India’s shift to electric mobility would only succeed if the batteries powering it were genuinely safe, not just cheap or fast to produce. That conviction shows up in the company’s approach to manufacturing — treating standards like AIS-156 not as a bureaucratic hurdle to clear, but as the baseline for doing right by the rider who trusts a battery pack sitting a few inches beneath their seat.
The Bharatcell team has grown alongside India’s EV industry itself — starting small, learning from the early growing pains the sector went through, and building a manufacturing discipline around safety, traceability, and quality control. It’s the kind of company run by people who still think about the person riding the scooter home late at night, not just the spec sheet. That’s ultimately what certification is meant to protect: not a document on a wall, but the everyday trust between a manufacturer and the people who ride on what they build.