PremiumNEW DELHI : Even as government think tank Niti Aayog moves to finalize a policy for battery swapping in the country, Taiwan-based battery swapping service provider & electric two-wheeler maker Gogoro is partnering with the state of Maharashtra & two-wheeler & three-wheeler chassis maker Belrise Industries to construct a $2.5 billion battery swapping infrastructure over eight years, which will be the largest such system in the world. Gogoro will look to raise funding from large external investors and infrastructure funds to for this undertaking. "The infrastructure will provide open access for various purposes, including battery swapping for electric vehicles, shared mobility, demand response services, distributed energy storage and smart agriculture. Gogoro already has a partnership with the country's largest two-wheeler maker Hero MotoCorp & is scouting to work with more OEMs as its swap stations and battery pack solutions go on-stream. The state of Maharashtra signed the non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Gogoro & Belrise in Davos on the sidelines of the ongoing World Economic Forum meet on Tuesday.
"We're creating a partnership to build an infrastructure where it's always been a chicken and egg situation: should electric vehicle come up first or charging infrastructure. With this MoU, battery swapping infrastructure will move fast. Maharashtra has landed on Gogoro after looking at all the technologies in the world. Besides deploying battery swapping stations to power up vehicles, we'll also be able to do bi-directional exchange with the grid, where Gogoro's swap stations can help balance the load on the electricity grid", Horace Luke, founder and CEO, Gogoro, told Mint.
"We'll get stations into Mumbai and Pune, among other densely populated cities, immediately. Our commitment has always been to build out a large part of our infrastructure towards the second half of this year. So this MoU is a stepping stone towards that. In dense cities because of safety, space and time constraints, at-home charging or direct public charging can be challenging. This is where we feel battery swapping is a viable solution.", Luke said.
B2B initial focus, but heading towards B2C
While Gogoro is currently running a partner with EV maker Zypp Electric to test battery swapping for gig workers, Luke has his eyes also set on the retail business, where individual users will use battery swapping, a model that has so far failed to scale in India.
"When FAME-II subsidies sunset, why would you want to buy a battery which forms 35%-40% of an EV", Luke said.
In Taiwan, Gogoro partners with OEMs such as Yamaha and Suzuki for its battery swapping solution, where Gogoro's battery pack can be used with these OEM's vehicles, making it interoperable for users who swap batteries at Gogoro stations. It also has its own branded vehicles deployed across Korea, Japan, Indonesia and other countries, with 10 OEM partners across two and three-wheeler segments.
Gogoro has been lobbying against standardizing the battery specifications for eligibility for incentives under an upcoming national battery swapping scheme.
"Our feedback to the government has been to build an open and accessible ecosystem. 99% of the industry has asked the government not to standardize battery specs and build an open platform to let the technology prove itself against others", Luke told Mint.
"We've been speaking to all leading two-wheeler OEMs. Everyone is looking to get a sense of how big the infra is and whether there is govt support here. A lot of preliminary conversation has happen and the MoU will initiate a lot of new conversations with OEMs", he added.