Battery Swapping Stations: A possible solution

The battery swapping stations is a place where, a vehicles discharged battery pack can be immediately swapped for a fully charged one within a time span of less than 5 minutes. To build a battery swapping station, automated machinery is required and this varies for different segment of vehicles for e.g. big stations for heavy vehicles like buses, trucks etc. and small and medium stations or car, three wheeler's and bikes.There are different types of Battery swapping stations viz. Side swapping, Rear swapping, and Bottom swapping.

The concept behind battery swapping stations is quite simple, an electric vehicle can drive into this automated stations. The battery can be swapped at the bottom, side or rare part of the vehicle depending upon the manufacturer. The Indian market is dominated by two-wheeler as a mode of transport and auto rickshaws as a convenient mode of public transport.

The Indian Scenario

The current scenario is India is that the consumers are accustomed to re-fueling their vehicles in less than 3 minutes. Therefore, in case of IC engines the factor of charging anxiety/fueling anxiety does not exist. Let’s take an example to prove this assertion. In case of two wheeler which is the major mode of transport in the Indian community, the average travel distance covered by a typical two wheeler consumer is between 30-50 kms per day. In this case, recharging battery for two wheeler is not necessary as the Battery generally provides a range cover of 80 – 100 kms in single charge.

However, in case of Three wheeler, the average distance traveled by this mode of transport is 100 – 200 km per day, because the single ride of an auto rickshaw is about 5-10 kms and the drives makes almost 20-30 rides in a day, helping passengers commute from one place to another. In such cases, wherein the demand of public transport is increasing day by day and with rise of government schemes for motivating people to use public transport, this option is the best alternative approach to curate consumer’s mind of re-fueling existing anxiety i.e. within 3 minutes.

The concept of Battery stations seems feasible majorly in case of e-rickshaws as their routes are highly standardized which can help in identifying the right locations where these stations would best serve their purpose. If we look at the law of diffusion of Innovation, we can see where the Indian community stands in terms of adoption of technology. Even though consumerism is increasing and people are getting aware of new technological innovations, they still stand as “late majority” in the curve.

Figure: Law of diffusion of innovation

The Indian mass market as stated earlier stands in early majority and will only accept the technology if they see someone else first adopt it, in this case the early adopters. The battery swapping is the only super-fast technique that competes with refueling gasoline vehicles. The vehicle has to be designed by the manufacturers accordingly

However there are also some key challenges for the standardization of batteries and this is the fundamental change that is requires across all vehicle segments. Looking at the current scenarios wherein lot of privately held companies and the government are putting a lot of efforts in the EV segment, this one size fits all approach may not be the solution. For instance different battery capacity with different size and specification would not go in the same slot. Also the manufacturers would want to hold on to their battery expertise and their proprietary technology to be provided only to the consumers who use their specified products. This will also lead for them to realize that this is advantageous to them wherein people will buy more EV's due to lack of proper public charging infrastructure and decentralized models like battery swapping

Challenges

One of the major challenges is regarding the battery ownership. The mind-set surrounding this question is always debatable. From the manufacturers perspective they would want to sell the product once and for all to the consumer including the battery so as the consumer has the whole and sole ownership of the battery, reason being the manufacturer would like to avoid the after-sales cost including the maintenance. In this case consumer has to deal with this after purchase. Also in this case the consumer is not in continuous loop with the manufacturer.

However in case of battery swapping, the consumer would like manufacturers to take accountability for the battery. There are several reasons behind this

1. Leasing model

This model can help the consumer to reduce the after purchase timely maintenance cost and they can seek manufacturers in case of technical problems, accidents as the manufacturers will be held responsible for the battery as stated above.

 2. Technological upgrades

There are continuous innovations and technological developments going on which makes today’s technology a thing of past within a short period of time. In such cases there will be continuous innovation in battery technology and in such cases manufacturer will have to provide the required upgrade to the consumer wherein the consumer can upgrade at a reasonable cost. In this case the consumer will remain in continuous loop with the manufacturer.

A perfect fit? Maybe

When it comes to battery performance, another key challenge is its performance degradation over a certain period i.e. charging cycles .India is a price sensitive market. The biggest hurdle is to execute the battery swapping service and make it add value financially to both the customer as well as the manufacturer. Because, this segment of Electric vehicles is at very nascent stage including the battery swapping systems and battery components, the costing and depreciation of batteries is not familiar to consumers as there is no model or reference model present to compare this upcoming system. India’s current key players in the battery swapping stations include acme group, sunmobility, fortum and many more giants are stepping forward to enter the market.

In three-wheeler e-rickshaw segment, the battery swappable system could be a perfect fit. An auto driver always drives within a predefined range. The current fleet of electric rickshaws majorly consist of lead acid batteries and there have been reports of accidents in the past few years. Lead acid batteries are not considered safe as they contain toxic materials like sulphuric acid, which is harmful to both humans and the environment. In comparison to Lithium Ion battery, Lead acid batteries do not have long range and have less battery life cycles.So this is very possible in near future, this entire fleet of lead acid batteries could be replaced by Lithium ion batteries. Therefore, there could be a need to redesign the e-rickshaw could rise.