India has sought investments from German companies in areas including smart cities and construction of airports to increase economic cooperation between the countries. India also expressed keenness to increase collaboration with Germany in areas such as smart cities, technology for green energy etc. Currently, 80 Indian companies operate in Germany.

The government has allocated Rs 6,600 crore (€825 million) for the Smart Cities Mission for 2019-20, which is about 7% more as compared to Rs 6,169 crore (about €770 million) for 2018-19. Since the launch of the mission, a total of 5,151 projects worth more than Rs 2,000 billion (€25 billion) have been identified and are in various stages of implementation in 100 cities. 

ID Tech and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar has signed MoU to identify and enhance joint research and development in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).  Under this MoU, IITRPR and ID Tech will jointly work on value creation for major Government initiatives across smart cities, as well as for the logistics and transportation domain, by leveraging advanced technologies.

Trade body FICCI and consulting major KPMG jointly released a report titled  ‘Cyber security in smart cities’ presenting a five-point action plan for smart cities to keep pace with cybersecurity needs, and build a cyber-resilient and trusted environment across the entire value chain.

Government of India has approved the proposal of implementation of scheme titled “Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicle in India phase II (FAME India Phase II) for promotion of Electric Vehicle (EV) in the country. The scheme with total outlay of Rs 10,000 Crores (about €1.25 billion) over the period of three years (i.e. from 2019-20 to 2021-22) will be implemented with effect from 1st April 2019. 

Government has approved the proposal for setting up a national mission on transformative mobility and battery storage, to drive clean, connected, shared, sustainable and holistic mobility initiatives. Apart from this, government has also approved creation of Phased Manufacturing Program (PMP) for 5 years till 2024 to support setting up of a few large-scale, export-competitive integrated batteries and cell-manufacturing Giga plants in India.

As part of the road map under the phased manufacturing programme (PMP), Government has notified phased increase in basic customs duty on parts of electric passenger vehicles to be assembled in India to 15% from April 2020 and 10% on imported lithium-ion cells by April 2021 to promote domestic manufacturing of EVs.  The notification also entails doubling the basic customs duty on completely built units of electric buses and trucks to 50% from April 2020.

In October 2018, the Supreme Court announced that the Indian automotive industry will transit from the Bharat Stage (BS)-IV emission norms to the BS-VI emission norms on April 1, 2020. From this date onwards, only BS-VI compliant vehicles will be sold in the country. While initially this was considered as a big challenge due to the skipping of the BS-V stage, the industry is now ready to meet the new emission standards. 

Government’s think tank NITI Aayog is working on an ITeS policy to introduce Intelligent Transport System (ITS) in the country in the wake of increasing fatalities.The Government would soon be announcing measures to curb the high deaths occurring on roads, Many initiatives towards transportation are taken where the idea is to have seamless, connected, shared, digitalized and zero-emission free mobility.

The government's think-tank NITI Aayog has unveiled a Model Concession Agreement (MCA) for introducing electric buses for public transportation on PPP mode on operational expenditure (per km basis) model. The Aayog stated that the model document has been developed based on international best practices to provide cleaner, more efficient, and affordable public transportation.