Two companies will jointly develop battery swap system for light electric vehicles. They aim to complete the pilot during Q4 '18
New Delhi, May 29, 2018
The Finland-based clean energy provider Fortum has signed an agreement with Swedish electric vehicles (EV) firm Clean Motion to offer sustainable mobility solutions in India by jointly developing a battery swap system, tailored specially for light electric vehicles. Clean Motion offers its Zbee all-electric three-wheeler in India.
The two companies aim to launch a pilot before end of 2018 on an existing Zbee cluster in India before further development and expansion in India. The primary target market for the initiative are the major taxi companies in India, and other organisations with large fleets of vehicles that are in need of high uptime in their operations. The ultimate vision is to enable all manufacturers that make or intend to make light electric vehicles to receive an offer to use the swapping technology in their vehicles.
Sanjay Aggarwal, Managing Director, Fortum India, said, “Leveraging its expertise in e-mobility solutions, Fortum plans to transform mobility in India. The Indian Government has a vision to achieve fully electric mobility by 2030. Being a pioneer in providing charging solutions for electric vehicles in the Nordics, Fortum plans to extend their service and be a prominent enabler towards the achievement of this vision in India as well.”
Aggarwal added, “India is already an important market for Fortum, which has flourishing solar operations in the country. The collaboration of Fortum and Clean Motion is a step forward to achieve our Company's vision 'For a cleaner world'.
Increased adoption of EV also means improved battery technology at affordable price and therefore, this collaboration agreement will further boost the market adoption of electric vehicles."
The two companies believe that to create a large-scale transition there must be a cost-efficient alternative for the operators and drivers. High-quality batteries with sufficient capacity suffers high initial cost which is one of the major limitation for transition to electric vehicles.
"The company wants to increase the utilisation of its vehicles, since this is in line with the overall corporate strategy of increased efficiency and use of resources. Hence, we believe that with a partner like Fortum, we can create a system that can really have a great impact on future businesses carried out with light electric vehicles. We believe that Zbee will be utilising the energy and will be operating in a very cost-efficient way,” said Göran Folkesson, CEO, Clean Motion AB.
According to Awadhesh Kumar Jha, Vice President - Charge & Drive & Sustainability, Fortum India, Fortum, being a clean energy company, intends to provide green energy solutions to all variants of electric vehicles in India. He further adds that Fortum look at the batteries as containers of electric energy which is quite suitable for swapping in light electrical vehicles. This collaboration complements its pioneer Charge & Drive, which is built for billions, where EV is charged and driven whereas this project instead lets you change the energy canister and drive EV, Jha said.
He added, "Fortum's vision is to increase the market adoption of electric vehicles by offering suitable business model for the user of EV. This project will address the end customers' concern of high cost of owning EV by reducing the initial costs for batteries. Fortum will own the batteries and same shall be let out to EV in swapping stations on pay-per-use model.”