- Battery swapping technology should reduce down-time for electric scooters
- Focuses on making electric scooters more convenient
- Concurs with HMSI president’s statement on new electric scooter
Honda is working on a battery swapping technology for electric scooters in India. Our sources hint that this technology will feature in the electric scooter that is currently being developed by the company’s Japanese arm.
The scooter will have a specialised compartment in the centre which stores the battery. This compartment can be tilted to the left side, with the footrest doubling up as a support structure. This allows the user to lift the battery out of the compartment, and replace it with a different one. HMSI president, Minoru Kato, recently confirmed that the development of electric scooters for Indian market is currently underway. We can expect the battery swapping feature to be introduced in this new electric scooter.
Conventional electric scooters that are on sale right now do not allow users to remove their battery. One of the biggest grouses with electric scooters is the down-time spent in charging these batteries. Even with modern lithium-ion batteries, it takes anywhere between six to eight hours to fully charge an electric scooter, during which it cannot be used. However with the ability to swap batteries, the user can keep one battery on charge while the other is being used to ride around. And once the battery is drained, all the user has to do is to swap it with the one which has been fully charged. This should make electric scooters significantly more convenient to use.
