As part of the plan toward a greener tomorrow, the battery swapping proposal emerged as a major highlight of the Union budget 2022. Though the electrical vehicle wedge in India is still at a nascent stage, the much-advocated battery swapping policy will find a way around the impediments of space congestion in urban areas, sidelining the charging time and the requirements of purchasing the battery for the vehicle owners.

What is battery swapping?

According to the regulations issued by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, EVs can now be purchased without batteries. The battery swapping model allows the owner of the EV to rent a battery instead. As a service, the EV owners can return or exchange the battery after use for a fee at the dedicated stations. The idea to promote battery swapping as a service is to push the adoption of electric mobility in India. The battery swapping comes with added advantages of overcoming the range anxiety, issue of deficient charging stations, maintaining cost, time, and much more.

Advantages of Battery Swapping

• Quicker charge time: Eliminating a driver’s wait time, battery swapping can be done in a couple of minutes versus 5-6 hours of waiting at a dedicated charging station.
• Reduced upfront cost: The batteries tend to lose their range over the years and become an added burden. But with battery ownership being replaced with leasing, eliminates the upfront cost with an increased driving range.
• Easier Infrastructure: Contrary to the charging stations the physical imprint of battery swapping is much lesser as it does not require huge spaces, as it is majorly a series of small storage compartments for the batteries.
• Easy Accessibility: The swapping of the battery can be done at any time and anywhere without any limitation, opening up the scope of swapping at a restaurant, an ATM, a gym, supermarkets, malls, or a parking lot.
• Increased Predictability of Battery Life: Quick charging or charging at high temperatures might lead to degradation of the battery. But with swapping, the battery can be charged in a controlled environment and when the electricity demand is low.
• Decreased Range Anxiety and Increased Travel Range: One of the highlighted benefits of battery swapping is eliminating range anxiety for EV owners.  For longer travel ranges EV owners are forced to carry battery packs with minimal peace of mind. Users will be able to travel happily if the swapping network is spread out well.

What happens to the dead batteries?

According to a Guardian report, over 12 million tonnes of lithium-ion batteries are likely to retire between 2021 and 2030. A huge amount of raw materials like lithium, nickel, and cobalt are involved in batteries which pose a negative impact on both environment and human life.

While the batteries tend to generate a lot of electronic waste once they have reached the end of their lives, experts are studying how to dump the dead batteries after extracting valuable metals to keep the essential metals in circulation. Apart from the recycling, solutions such as using batteries for alternative sectors, for instance storing excess power at solar or wind farms, have also cropped up.

Choosing pros over cons!

When referring to the disadvantages of battery swapping, while there can be few, the benefits outweigh the cons. Issues like lack of standardisation of battery packs, increase in demand for batteries with the increased demand of EVs, the higher rate of GST for the EVs bought without batteries, etc. might be a matter of concern. But as the policies unfold, it will be evident how efficiently the government is working on addressing the key concerns.