India has promised to unveil a new policy to promote battery swapping in electric vehicles, but industry insiders and academic experts said the practice of substituting freshly-charged batteries with discharged ones faces many hurdles before it might see many takers.
For starters, manufacturers are innovating with different kinds of battery technologies and, in turn, working with varying cell chemistries. Swapping batteries with such differences will cause issues.
“In a tropical country like India, a lot of good work needs to happen in thermal management and battery chemistry if swappable batteries are to be considered as a viable option,” said Sagar Mitra, an IIT Bombay professor who is researching lithium-ion cells that power electric vehicles.
Some industry insiders worried more about how EV battery swapping could stifle innovation.
Nilay Chandra, Ather Energy’s Vice-president of Marketing and Charging Infrastructure, said he was not convinced with the idea of standardisation of batteries for personal vehicles since brands would find it very difficult to fulfil the core requirement, resulting in decreasing innovation.
“Also, you don’t want to take the heart of the vehicle and swap it around,” Chandra said.
There is also the problem of competition. It might be difficult to get the EV manufacturers to agree on interoperability which will not allow them to give their customers a strategic advantage in terms of superior range over their rivals.
“Having been in the thick of all things battery swapping, we can say it is still very early to introduce an interoperability standard for an industry-wide implementation,” said Arun Sreyas, a co-founder of EV infrastructure company RACEnergy.
Sreyas also pointed out the evolving cell chemistries and varying applications of EVs as factors impacting the progress of the battery swapping market if curtailed by standardisation.
Others focused on the higher costs tied to swapping stations.
“While battery swapping is a good concept, it is not that easy and hence we see only a few successful ventures across Taiwan, China and maybe a few emerging ones in the US,” Rajeev Singh, partner and automotive leader at Deloitte India, said, highlighting the issues with standardisation and the high cost of putting up swapping stations.
“While this will take out a significant cost from the vehicle, we will need large players who are willing to invest and do business in the space of Battery as a Service (BAAS),” Singh said.
To be sure, while electric car maker Tesla’s chief Elon Musk tried and abandoned the idea of battery swapping, the practice has started to gain popularity in China, which has seen many EV buyers in recent years.
China is also home to the world’s biggest battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology, which has been rooting hard for EV battery swapping.
Why do we still need it?
EV adoption in India has been snail-paced due to the range anxiety issue arising out of poor charging infrastructure. That has made its nascent EV sector desperate for an alternative to charging electric vehicles, making it impossible for the country to not look at battery swapping.
The need is urgent: In 2021, India saw 1.6 times more buyers jumping on the green mobility bandwagon. Indians invested in 3,11,360 EVs, more than the combined sales of 2020 and 2019.
Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget promise of a new battery swap scheme should help in addressing these issues and enable a quicker transition to green mobility.
Nearly 1 in 4 Indians rated the lack of public charging infrastructure as the greatest concern regarding EVs, revealed a recent global consumer study by Deloitte.
Some industry players and policymakers said standardisation of battery packs would boost EV adoption in the world’s second-most populous nation. “The standardisation will allow consumers to easily swap batteries without any fitment issue and keep the rider on the go,” said Naveen Munjal, the managing director of Hero Electric Vehicles Pvt Ltd.
Ather’s Chandra was not for standardisation of battery packs in the private vehicle segment, but said it made sense in the commercial segment including fleet operators and delivery aggregators.
Others focused more on the execution aspect of the proposed battery swap standards.
“It’s great to see the push for green energy in this Budget. Now, what would be interesting to see are the interoperability standards that have been laid out by the government and how the industry conforms to these standards,” said Ashwin Shankar, founder of BatteryPool, a startup providing battery swapping services.
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