Honda is trying to increase a battery-swapping service from Asia to Europe, however the focus will stay on two-wheeled automobiles like mopeds and scooters.
The automaker presently presents battery-swapping in Japan, India, Indonesia, and Thailand, however in a Tuesday press launch mentioned it is now working with Swedish scooter rental startup GoCimo on testing of the idea in Malmö, Sweden, for one 12 months starting in February 2025.
Honda battery swapping
The check program, which can make the most of Honda EM1 scooters already offered in Europe, will have a look at the suitability of battery swapping for the European city surroundings, in addition to enterprise feasibility, the discharge mentioned.
As a substitute of whole battery packs for vehicles and vans, as with different battery-swapping companies, Honda focuses on smaller modules. The Honda Cellular Energy Pack modules are about 1.5 kwh every, which ought to be sufficient for scooters or maybe for very small city EVs if utilized in a number of. That makes every unit rather more highly effective than what’s utilized by the fashionable Motocompacto the automaker aimed to ship out with some 2024 Honda Prologue EVs within the U.S.
Honda battery swapping
These modules are charged on a rack, and customers merely examine them out as wanted. This permits city residents to get by with out house charging, can also be a very good resolution in European cities, the place parking and area constraints restrict streetside charging choices. To seek out out, Honda will provide 30 EM1 scooters, 60 Cellular Energy Pack batteries, and three Energy Pack Exchanger swap stations to GoCimo for the check program in Sweden’s third-largest metropolis.
Honda has proven swappable-battery programs, primarily the identical as this method, since CES 2018, and recommended it might be headed to some bikes, as a part of a swappable-battery consortium with Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha. It is since mentioned—final 12 months, most not too long ago—that the Cellular Energy Pack format might be utilized in “varied electrical merchandise.”
