Japanese automaker Honda Motors will roll out its battery-swapping services for electric three-wheelers in Bengaluru from June this year. With this, the company aims to analyse the market in India's tech capital before extending the service to other regions and the two-wheeler segment.
Honda Power Pack Energy India, a subsidiary of the automaker, has already invested Rs 135 crore to roll out the service.
Kiyoshi Ito, Chairman and Managing Director of the subsidiary, informed The Economic Times that the company will continue to invest in developing the battery sharing network.
Karnataka's Commissioner for Industries Gunjan Krishna informed ET that the company will begin with seven stations, before expanding to 50 over the next one and half years.
A battery-swapping station is a place where a drained electric vehicle battery can be exchanged with a fully charged one. These stations act as battery aggregators, offering the infrastructure for charging a large number of batteries and making charged batteries available to EVs.
Honda performed its proof-of-concept test in Mumbai, but chose Bengaluru to unveil the service, said Krishna.
According to Honda, when electric three-wheelers will be sold without batteries, more consumers will be able to buy them.
The network expansion in Bengaluru will be carried out in stages. The company expects that its battery-sharing service will drive the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) by addressing issues such as range-related worries, cost of the vehicle and charging time.
Also read: Electric two- and three-wheelers, charging infra and more: Hero MotoCorp’s EV gameplan explained
The 2017 EV policy in India aims to draw Rs 31,000 crore in R&D and manufacturing investments. Several states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Delhi, Tamil Nadu have announced their state policies since then.
EV assembly, manufacturing, component manufacturing, battery-pack module manufacturing, EV charging infrastructure equipment manufacturing, and a few other EV production-related units are all covered by Karnataka's EV subsidy.
(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)
First Published: Jan 14, 2022 6:32 PM IST
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