Instant battery swaps EV adoption picks up in Asia

Gogoro Inc., the Taipei-based company that sold Hsiao helps swap out its two batteries as often as for up to 630 kilometers (392 miles) of driving each month, all for a subscription fee of 849 new Taiwan dollars ($27.80). Hsiao’s app identifies the nearest swapping station with charged batteries in stock. Once there, depleted batteries can be exchanged by putting into a vending-machine-like device, which then distributes fresh ones.

Hsiao is among many EV companies who are starting to embrace electric mobility with the help of batteries that can be changed out on the fly. While battery-swapping is complicated to implement in electric cars — part of why it has failed to catch on in the West — companies like Gogoro are proving that mopeds, rickshaws and other two- and three-wheelers are well suited to quick-and-easy battery switches, which can both alleviate range anxiety and spur wider EV adoption.

The boost can’t come soon enough, either. In India, for example, nearly 80% of vehicles sold are two-wheelers, and motorcycles and rickshaws account for roughly one third of fuel consumed on the road.

Gogoro says it has more than 500,000 active monthly users and over 260 swaps on its network every minute, plus pilot programs in Indonesia, the Philippines and India. Also in India, Hyderabad-based RACEnergy sells retrofitting kits to convert gasoline rickshaws into electric models with batteries that can be swapped at its stations. In Singapore, MO Batteries offers a local swapping pilot program and has plans to enter Malaysia; the company is also testing battery swapping with logistics heavyweight DHL in Vietnam. Swapping’s potential has even lured multinationals to the fold: Honda Motor recently installed its first swapping station for moped drivers in Tokyo.

While its Western counterparts, whose battery-swapping efforts have largely failed to take off. Israeli startup Better Place launched in 2007 to target battery swapping for electric sedans, but by 2013 it was bankrupt, due in large part to the exorbitant cost of developing charging and swapping infrastructure for cars. That same year, Tesla Inc. unveiled a plan to enable 90-second battery swaps for the Model S, but never rolled it out at scale.