Urban Transport

Honda's battery exchange stations keep e-moto riders on the move

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The first mass-production Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: station has started operation in Tokyo
Honda
The first mass-production Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: station has started operation in Tokyo
Honda
Each Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: station can accommodate 12 Honda Mobile Power Packs
Honda
The Honda Mobile Power Pack features a handle to the top for easy removal from the angled charging bay of the Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: station
Honda
Registered users will need to tap the interface with an IC card to use the service
Honda
A master Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: station can be connected to multiple slave units to increase the number of available Mobile Power Packs
Honda
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In a model similar to that used by Gogoro, Honda has started rolling out modular battery exchange stations in Japan and India that each hold a dozen Mobile Power Packs for hot-swaps into electric scooters, motorcycles and rickshaws.

The basic idea is that instead of e-mobility users having to worry about range and charging time, they would just roll up to a Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: station when running low on juice, remove the spent battery from their compatible vehicle and swap it for a fresh battery pack from one of the angled bays.

User registrations, payments and searches for station locations will all be handled by Honda's Power Pack Cloud service, which will also be home to management tools for station operators.

The battery packs in question are Honda's Mobile Power Packs, which we saw at the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show and later in a bunch of robotic concepts. Each 1.3-kWh Li-ion battery pack measures 298 x 177.3 x 156.3 mm (11.7 x 6.9 x 6.1 in), weighs 10.3 kg (22.7 lb), rocks a handle up top for an easy swap, and is IP65-rated weatherproof.

The Honda Mobile Power Pack features a handle to the top for easy removal from the angled charging bay of the Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: station
Honda

The first Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: station has been delivered to Tokyo and is being operated by Gachaco – a company set up earlier this year by motorcycle makers Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha, along with energy company Eneos, to launch a standardized battery sharing service in major cities throughout Japan.

Each grid-connected station holds 12 batteries, but multiple slave units can be connected to a single master unit to expand the number of available battery packs per installation.

A Honda subsidiary in India has also started a battery sharing service for electric rickshaw taxis that makes use of the Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: station.

Source: Honda

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3 comments
paul314
What's the premium over just recharging yourself and watching your meter?
Daishi
I think the key to something like this taking off is making it a vendor neutral standard. Is anyone besides Honda going to use the format? Similarly I wish places that let you rent scooters and ebikes would interop or work with a common app so you don't need 12 apps and accounts to use them. I'd use them more often but sometimes I can't find scooters I have an account with and don't have an app for the scooters/bikes that are closer to me. I know they don't like to cooperate but it seems like they could work out some kind of "roaming" fee to use a competitor product through their payment system to make it worth doing.
Aross
This should be the standard for all EVs. It would totally eliminate the long recharge times as well as having to buy a new car each time your battery fails. We have already seen the gouging that goes on when a battery fails on such things as phones and tablets etc. I've heard that the cost of replacing the battery in a Tesla is over $20K. The infrastructure is already in place. They only have to change the refuelling centres from petroleum to battery replacement centres.