Why your electric scooter cannot use a car's CCS2 fast charger: LECCS and Type 6, explained

Pull into a public charging station with an electric scooter and the big CCS2 gun hanging there will not help you. It will not fit, and even if it did, it would not work. The reason is not snobbery about two-wheelers. It is physics, cost and a separate pair of Indian standards written for light EVs.

The short answer: voltage, size and the onboard charger

CCS2 was designed around cars and buses. The CHAdeMO Association, arguing in August 2026 that Europe should stop forcing CCS2 on small electric vehicles, listed three objections that apply equally in India: the plug "is too large", "the voltage levels are incompatible", and because CCS2 combines AC and DC in one plug, it "necessitates the installation of a large, heavy and expensive on-board charger". A typical electric scooter pack runs at a fraction of a car pack's voltage. A DC charger built to push 400V or more into a car has nothing useful to give it.

That onboard charger point is the one owners miss. On a car, the AC side of the CCS2 inlet feeds a rectifier inside the vehicle. Put that on a scooter and you add weight and cost to a machine that is mostly price.

India's two light EV connectors, Type 6 and Type 7

BIS has published two. IS 17017 (Part 2 / Section 6), the Type 6 or LEVDC connector, is DC only and covers 20V to 120V with 15A to 125A continuous, with the latch on the charger side rather than the vehicle, which keeps the vehicle inlet simple and cheap. EVreporter reported in April 2024 that Ola, Tork and Ultraviolette had adopted it.

IS 17017 (Part 2 / Section 7), approved in October 2023 and known as LECCS or Type 7, does both in one nine-pin interface: up to 240V and 32A on AC, which is 7.7 kW, and up to 120V and 100A on DC, which is 12 kW. It grew out of a connector Ather Energy started developing in 2020 and open-sourced in 2021, at a time when more than 10 connector types were in use. The communication protocol specification, IS 17017 Part 31, followed in February 2024. Both Type 6 and Type 7 talk to the charger over CAN bus, not the power line communication that CCS2 and ISO 15118 use.

What this means when you buy and charge

Public money has already picked sides. Under the PM E-DRIVE charging guidelines, two and three-wheeler chargers must use Light EV DC (IS-17017-2-6) or Light EV AC/DC Combo (IS-17017-2-7) connectors with capacities up to 12 kW, while four-wheelers, buses and trucks get CCS-II (IS-17017-2-3) from 50 kW to 250 kW. Of the 72,300 stations the scheme targets, 48,400 are for two and three-wheelers.

So before you buy, ask which of the two inlets your scooter has, because a Type 6 vehicle cannot use a Type 7 AC supply and the networks are not identical. Then ask what the vehicle's own DC limit is, not the charger's. A 12 kW gun on a scooter that accepts 3 kW is still a 3 kW charge. For most owners the honest answer remains the 5A socket at home or a removable battery carried upstairs, with DC fast charging used on longer runs.

The same argument is live in Europe, where CHAdeMO wants EN IEC 62196-6, the Type 6 standard, allowed alongside CCS2 for L-category vehicles, and set up a Light Electric Vehicle Charging Promotion working group in June 2026 to push it. India settled its version three years earlier.

Sources

• Type 7 connector
• Towards Standardization of DC Charging for Light E-Vehicles, EVreporter
• Government releases guidelines for EV charging infra under PM E-Drive, Autocar Professional
• CHAdeMO calls for L-Category DC normal charging standard
• CHAdeMO establishes LEV Charging Promotion WG