How Viable is Battery Swapping for EVs in India

Just beneath a metro station in Noida, one can see a small station for ‘battery swapping’. Two wheeler drivers working for quick commerce platforms are often found stationing their bikes there in order to swap their discharged vehicle batteries with recharged ones available at the station. The battery swap station has been set up by ‘Yulu’, an urban mobility platform that enables and encourages sustainable modes of transport.

On January 10, the Ministry of Power released a set of guidelines for ‘Installation and Operation of Battery Swapping and Charging Stations’ with an aim to foster battery swapping ecosystem for electric vehicles (EVs) in the country. The guidelines can help in scaling the infrastructure for EVs through swappable batteries which can be charged separately at dedicated battery charging stations and comes as an alternative to vehicle charging stations.

What do the battery swapping guidelines say?

Battery swapping essentially refers to a method where a fully or partially discharged swappable battery of an EV is quickly replaced with a charged battery. Besides promoting swapping as an alternative to power EVs, the guidelines aim to promote battery as a service model (BaaS) and develop a swapping ecosystem. These set of rules have been rolled out for the ones who operate battery charging stations (BCS) and battery swapping stations (BSS) and are applicable to all swappable battery providers.

Additionally, the guidelines also define several essential parts of the swapping ecosystem, including battery to grid (B2G), battery provider and swappable battery. B2G refers to a system in which swappable batteries, mainly from EVs or BSS, stores energy not just for use but also to supply electricity back to the power grid when needed. Swappable batteries are the ones designed for using in EVs and can be quickly replaced with another one, whereas battery providers refers to any entity that provides swappable batteries or BaaS to EV owners.

Further, the regulations state that the owners of a BCS or BSS will be allowed to use an ‘existing electricity connection with or without seeking an increase in the connected load, for charging the swappable batteries.’ Additionally, battery swapping or battery charging stations can deploy liquid-cooled swappable batteries for larger vehicles such as trucks and buses, the guidelines stated. In terms of safety measures, existing provisions under the law will remain applicable to the battery swapping infrastructure.

Can swapping be a strong alternative to charging infrastructure?

Currently, battery swapping is used for e-2wheelers and e-3wheelers and mostly among commercial vehicles. It comes as an effective solution as it helps save a lot of the time for the fleet of e-vehicles as opposed to the time spent in connecting the vehicles to charging stations. As per records, a battery swap takes nearly three to five minutes of time whereas, charging an electric vehicle can take from 30 minutes to more than 12 hours of time, depending on the type of charger being used. Thereby, from the perspective of the gig workers or commercial vehicle drivers, it’s a faster way to work on a daily basis as losing out on time can often lead to losing out on money.

However, despite being the quicker option, battery swapping stations still lag behind in terms of accessibility of the infrastructure. This often leads to anxiety among the drivers when travelling long distance as they fear not finding a battery swapping station easily. As of December 2024, there are over 25,000 public charging stations for EVs in India. However, as per publicly available records, the number of battery swapping stations for EVs is nearly 2,500.

One of the major reasons behind the large difference of capacity for charging and battery swapping infrastructure, is the high costs involved in building it, which also requires collaboration between government agencies, automakers as well as battery providers. Additionally, another primary reason why the implementation of battery swapping remains limited is the challenge of standardizing battery sizes across various vehicle models in order to ensure compatibility. Since different automobile manufacturers use different battery chemistries and sizes, creating a battery swap system that is universal, remains quite a task.

Even, in case of the ‘Yulu’ battery swap stations, often seen across Delhi NCR, the service is available only to the vehicles manufactured by the company. Despite efforts to scale up the swapping infrastructure in the country, industry investors remain skeptical. However, in order to have an alternate to charging facilities for EVs, somebody needs to do the heavy lifting especially in terms of the Capex investments.