India Battery-Swapping Boom Hinges on Deliveries and Rickshaws

f9t3{0u2boc]7w0kfj5cj8bx_media_dl_1.png India's Bureau of Energy Efficie

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(Bloomberg) — Electric motorcycles, scooters and rickshaws are slowly beginning to replace gas guzzling vehicles in India, making the world’s most populous nation a potential key growth market for charging technologies like battery swapping.

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Startups, fuel retailers including Indian Oil Corp. and billionaire Mukesh Ambani, the nation’s richest person, have for years discussed ambitions of building out major networks of swapping stations — which allow users to quickly exchange expired batteries for charged ones.

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Now growth in sales of battery-powered two-and-three wheelers, favored by tuk-tuk operators, gig workers and for quick-commerce delivery fleets, is finally giving the sector some momentum. Project developers are betting commercial drivers will opt for the speed of switching a depleted pack, rather than risk lost earnings while waiting for conventional recharging. 

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Battery-powered three-wheelers accounted for 57% of all new sales of those vehicles last year, data compiled by BloombergNEF shows. Electric sales were 6% of the two-wheeler category in 2024, up from less than 1% in 2020. Swapping technology is gaining traction to meet the needs of those markets, according to India’s government, helping efforts to tackle transport-related emissions that constitute about 9% of the country’s total. 

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“We have barely scratched the surface in terms of what is required,” said Pulkit Khurana, co-founder of Battery Smart, a startup that targets commercial vehicles and has more than 1,400 swapping sites across 40 cities. “EV adoption has definitely been increasing.”

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Battery Smart and other leading firms have raised more than $1 billion to deploy on the expansion of swapping networks in India and the technology is emerging as a “crucial solution” for electric two-and-three wheelers, JMK Research & Analytics said in an October report. Sun Mobility, which operates about 800 sites and has partnered with Indian Oil, is also focused on commercial customers.

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India is likely to require more than 26,000 swapping kiosks by the end of the current fiscal year, which runs through March 2026, and roughly 111,000 by FY2030, India’s government estimated in a report on the electric vehicle market published last year. So far, there are around 2,600 battery swapping kiosks, with the majority in Delhi, according to the India Battery Swapping Association, an industry group.

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Installations have lagged behind the adoption of more traditional public charging infrastructure, with a total of about 26,367 EV charging stations now in place, the Ministry of Heavy Industries said this month. 

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Taipei-based Gogoro Inc., which in 2023 outlined a $2.5 billion strategy with a local partner to add as many as 15,000 swapping kiosks across India, last year flagged delays to its plans in the country, in part as a result of uncertainty over policy on subsidies for swapping technology. “We continue to believe in the future growth of India’s EV ecosystem,” Henry Chiang, Gogoro’s interim chief executive officer said on a November earnings call. Other prospective entrants to the sector have encountered difficulties in raising sufficient funding.