Honda installed first EV battery exchange station in Tokyo, Japan through cooperation with battery sharing service Gachaco. The launch of Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: in Tokyo marks the beginning of what Honda hopes will be a large network of battery change stations in Japan, where riders can quickly and easily exchange Motorcycle EV out of battery.
The concept of a battery swap station was hardly pioneered by Honda’s motobikehowever, like the Verge report. Taiwan Scooter Company Gogoro has used similar technology for years, even partnering with Hero in India to make battery swapping stations possible. The company plans to make battery swaps commonplace in one of the world’s largest two-wheeler markets.
Now Honda is channeling its resources towards the same goal, it seems battery exchange could become the mainstream method for charging, or rather, recharging electric motorcycles. Well, at least in the Eastern countries.
Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: can store and charge up to 12 batteries, but expandable to better fit in cities or locations where a dozen batteries will not be enough. The idea is to provide a stream of batteries, as racers pull up and swap used tiles for new ones. As soon as the driver places a battery pack in the Exchanger e:, the station automatically starts recharging the battery. Doing so will take about five hours in total, a long time to wait, but the racers will never know it.
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Honda says it’s paying close attention to the ease of use and efficiency of the battery exchange process. Electric motorcycle riders will use the system via NFC, via IC or “Smart” cards — kind of like using a metro card in any major city, or tapping a credit card to pay at a store.
The Honda Exchanger e: will authenticate the rider and use whatever settings they saved to tell them which batteries (and how many) to reach for using LED lights to make it clear. Ideally, these settings will have been saved when riders first registered to use the Power Pack Exchanger e:, but Honda says the whole process can be completed at any of the stations. That’s important for first-time users, although it might be annoying for battery swapping pros who are eager to swap batteries and go.
The Exchanger e: will even operate during power outages by drawing power away from full batteries to charge fully-depleted ones. It can also be used to power nearby homes or shops, since it feautes bidirectional charging. It even has a cooling system to stop heat-induced degradation of battery packs.
But I think it’s an even bigger deal that Honda’s partners for its nascent battery network include the other major motorcycle makers from Japan: Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki. They’ve agreed to use Honda’s Mobile Power Pack e: batteries to power upcoming electric models. Meaning that Honda’s MPP e: packs, and now this Power Pack Exchanger e:, will underpin the transition to EV motorcycles in Japan. Ah, standardize good.
Now, standardization will make owning an electric motorcycle abroad easy by eliminating long charging times. We can only hope the US gets the Power Pack Exchanger e: stations as the company charges a lifetime into its EV bike strategy.
