Two-wheeler battery swapping in China – the market demand reaches 26 million
China is the largest country in the world in the production and sales of electric two-wheelers. At present, the number of electric two-wheelers in China is close to 400 million, and the average annual output is about 35 million. In recent years, the sales volume of electric two-wheelers in China has risen rapidly to more than 40 million units, and exceeded 48 million units in 2021 and 2022.
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With the expansion of the electric two-wheelers market and the development of instant delivery industries such as takeaways, the battery swapping has entered the vigorous development, many companies are vying to join the battery swapping market.
What is the two-wheeler battery swapping?
The two-wheeler battery swapping refers to the technology of replacing the battery pack for electric two-wheelers. It does not use charging but directly replaces the battery to renew the battery life. This mode of separating the electric bicycle and the battery for energy replenishment is called the battery swapping.
When compare battery swap vs charging, battery swap is accomplished through standardized and unified batteries, battery swapping station, and two wheeler electric bike. When the electric bicycle is about to run out of power, just like refueling a vehicle, you only need to find a nearby battery swapping station to replace the battery.
What are the advantages of the two-wheeler battery swapping?
High efficiency
This is an obvious advantage of the battery swapping. The long-term charging process of electric two-wheelers is eliminated, and the user experience is greatly enhanced. When the electric bicycle is out of power, you only need to find the nearest battery swapping cabinet through the APP, and then scan the code to open the cabinet door to replace the battery. It takes only 10 seconds to swap the battery and you don’t need to wait.
High security
The traditional charging method for electric two-wheelers is often accompanied by danger due to the limitation of charging scenarios. Many old communities have not set up charging facilities, and many electric two-wheelers users have to use extremely dangerous “flying wire charging”. The exposed wires will cause battery explosions, fires and other disasters due to circuit aging or excessive voltage and current.
However, the two-wheeler battery swapping does not require charging, and all batteries will be stored in the smart battery swapping cabinet for safe centralized management. The SaaS intelligent management platform of the battery swapping cabinet will monitor the health status of the batteries at any time, and conduct unified monitoring and adjustment on whether the battery is fully charged, and whether the battery is in danger, so that it can control the danger within a controllable range.
Sufficient battery life
Every electric bicycle user will have anxiety on mileage, worrying that the bicycle will run out of power halfway through the ride. However, the appearance of the battery swapping perfectly solves this problem.
Once the battery is found to be running out of power, you can directly navigate to the nearest smart battery swapping cabinet, and open it by scanning the code. You just need to put the old battery into the smart battery swapping cabinet and replace it with a fully charged battery to your electric bicycle. The whole process takes less than one minute.
What are the problems in the development of the two-wheeler battery swapping?
Variation in battery life of various brands
At present, the biggest pain point for takeaway riders is “mileage anxiety”. The battery life is the most basic and important consideration for users to choose a battery swapping brand. In order to seize the market, major battery swapping brands, such as top 10 battery swapping station manufacturers, are trying their best to constantly challenge the upper limit of the mileage range of the battery.
Currently the electric two-wheeler companies generally adopt the constant velocity method for endurance testing. The constant velocity method can be simply understood as a method for testing theoretical battery life in the laboratory, and the theoretical battery life produced by it cannot truly reflect the actual usage scenario of the users.
Moreover, the battery life will gradually decrease over time, resulting in a large gap between the nominal battery life data of some battery swapping brands and the actual riding of users.
According to the data, some batteries with a nominal cruising range of 70-80km turns ou to be reported by users that the actual mileage is about 50-60km. For batteries with a nominal cruising range of 80-100km, the actual mileage reported by users is about 80km. And even some brands have been complained that the battery with a nominal battery life of 60km actually runs only 20-30km and then turns off.
Although most of the data comes from the comments of riders in the community, which may not be very accurate, but generally speaking, the current level of battery life for two-wheelers is different from brand to brand.
At present, most of the batteries for electric two-wheelers on the market are 48v-30Ah. TYCORUN ENERGY’s two-wheeler battery has a high energy density and fast charging speed, the maximum specification of it can reach 3600wh, providing more mileage range and up to 1000 times of cycle life.
Insufficient operation and service level
For the two-wheeler battery swapping industry, pre-sales service is mostly an opportunity to attract users to choose a brand. In addition to the advertising recommendations of each brand, most choices for a two-wheeler battery swapping brand are based on word-of-mouth and promotion.
In respect of two-wheeler battery swapping, users are most concerned about whether the actual condition of the batteries/smart battery swapping cabinets meet their expectations, whether the quality of the equipment is guaranteed, and whether the user’s appeal can receive positive feedback in a timely manner.
At present, some brands are still inadequate in after-sales service, mainly because of the timeliness of solving problems, which is a relatively unfavorable factor for brand reputation and industry development.
With the development of battery swapping technology and the increasing emphasis on user services, swap charging station companies are working hard to provide users with practical and fast service guarantees. For example, TYCORUN ENERGY proposed the “whole industry chain self-operated” mode which can quickly respond to user needs, quickly feed back user problems to all aspects of software and hardware, to improve service efficiency and product iteration efficiency, which is worth learning from in the industry.
What is the user scale of the two-wheeler battery swapping?
In the field of electric two-wheelers, the new economy of instant delivery such as express delivery and takeaways has a huge rigid demand for battery swapping, and the battery swapping market has huge market potential. Data shows that the average daily mileage of a takeaway rider is as high as 120km, the average riding time is about 12.5h, and the daily charging times are 2-3 times or more.
It takes at least 6 to 8 hours to fully charge a lithium battery in the charging mode, and the battery swapping solves the problem of difficult charging for the rider. The whole process of taking out the battery, swapping the battery and loading to the electric bicycle takes less than 1 minute. Compared with charging for several hours at every turn, the battery swapping is extremely efficient in replenishing energy for takeaway riders, and is favored by them.
As of 2022, there are nearly 13 million riders in China, and each rider needs to change the battery at least 2-3 times a day. In the field of instant delivery, there is a rigid demand market with more than 26 million orders every day for the battery swapping. If the battery swapping can be truly popularized in China, there will be 300 million C-end users of electric two-wheelers bringing an increase to the battery swapping market. And if look at the world, the demand is double.
Prospects of two-wheeler battery swapping
In China, the popularization and standardization of electric two-wheelers has received more and more attention. Under the multiple encouragements of policy and continuous improvement of battery swapping companies, the application prospect of the two-wheeler battery swapping industry is broad.
In addition to solving the pain points of electric two-wheelers such as short battery life, slow charging, and limited charging places at the current stage, the battery swapping can also reduce the waste of power resources, prolong battery life, and promote the step-by-step development and recycling of batteries. Although the high lease amount of battery swapping makes it temporarily unfavorable to the public users, but as a swap station for takeaway riders, the market penetration rate of battery swapping stations will gradually increase.
With the gradual implementation of the standardization policy, battery swapping companies may gradually turn their attention to the C-end and launch more battery swapping modes that are beneficial to public users, aiming at 300 million electric two-wheelers market, and promote the large-scale application of the two-wheeler battery swapping.
Two-wheeler battery swapping in China – the market demand reaches 26 million
With the expansion of the electric two-wheelers market and the development of instant delivery industries such as takeaways, the battery swapping has entered the vigorous development, many companies are vying to join the battery swapping market.
What is the two-wheeler battery swapping?
The two-wheeler battery swapping refers to the technology of replacing the battery pack for electric two-wheelers. It does not use charging but directly replaces the battery to renew the battery life. This mode of separating the electric bicycle and the battery for energy replenishment is called the battery swapping.
When compare battery swap vs charging, battery swap is accomplished through standardized and unified batteries, battery swapping station, and two wheeler electric bike. When the electric bicycle is about to run out of power, just like refueling a vehicle, you only need to find a nearby battery swapping station to replace the battery.
What are the advantages of the two-wheeler battery swapping?
High efficiency
This is an obvious advantage of the battery swapping. The long-term charging process of electric two-wheelers is eliminated, and the user experience is greatly enhanced. When the electric bicycle is out of power, you only need to find the nearest battery swapping cabinet through the APP, and then scan the code to open the cabinet door to replace the battery. It takes only 10 seconds to swap the battery and you don’t need to wait.
High security
The traditional charging method for electric two-wheelers is often accompanied by danger due to the limitation of charging scenarios. Many old communities have not set up charging facilities, and many electric two-wheelers users have to use extremely dangerous “flying wire charging”. The exposed wires will cause battery explosions, fires and other disasters due to circuit aging or excessive voltage and current.
However, the two-wheeler battery swapping does not require charging, and all batteries will be stored in the smart battery swapping cabinet for safe centralized management. The SaaS intelligent management platform of the battery swapping cabinet will monitor the health status of the batteries at any time, and conduct unified monitoring and adjustment on whether the battery is fully charged, and whether the battery is in danger, so that it can control the danger within a controllable range.
Sufficient battery life
Every electric bicycle user will have anxiety on mileage, worrying that the bicycle will run out of power halfway through the ride. However, the appearance of the battery swapping perfectly solves this problem.
Once the battery is found to be running out of power, you can directly navigate to the nearest smart battery swapping cabinet, and open it by scanning the code. You just need to put the old battery into the smart battery swapping cabinet and replace it with a fully charged battery to your electric bicycle. The whole process takes less than one minute.
What are the problems in the development of the two-wheeler battery swapping?
Variation in battery life of various brands
At present, the biggest pain point for takeaway riders is “mileage anxiety”. The battery life is the most basic and important consideration for users to choose a battery swapping brand. In order to seize the market, major battery swapping brands, such as top 10 battery swapping station manufacturers, are trying their best to constantly challenge the upper limit of the mileage range of the battery.
Currently the electric two-wheeler companies generally adopt the constant velocity method for endurance testing. The constant velocity method can be simply understood as a method for testing theoretical battery life in the laboratory, and the theoretical battery life produced by it cannot truly reflect the actual usage scenario of the users.
Moreover, the battery life will gradually decrease over time, resulting in a large gap between the nominal battery life data of some battery swapping brands and the actual riding of users.
According to the data, some batteries with a nominal cruising range of 70-80km turns ou to be reported by users that the actual mileage is about 50-60km. For batteries with a nominal cruising range of 80-100km, the actual mileage reported by users is about 80km. And even some brands have been complained that the battery with a nominal battery life of 60km actually runs only 20-30km and then turns off.
Although most of the data comes from the comments of riders in the community, which may not be very accurate, but generally speaking, the current level of battery life for two-wheelers is different from brand to brand.
At present, most of the batteries for electric two-wheelers on the market are 48v-30Ah. TYCORUN ENERGY’s two-wheeler battery has a high energy density and fast charging speed, the maximum specification of it can reach 3600wh, providing more mileage range and up to 1000 times of cycle life.
Insufficient operation and service level
For the two-wheeler battery swapping industry, pre-sales service is mostly an opportunity to attract users to choose a brand. In addition to the advertising recommendations of each brand, most choices for a two-wheeler battery swapping brand are based on word-of-mouth and promotion.
In respect of two-wheeler battery swapping, users are most concerned about whether the actual condition of the batteries/smart battery swapping cabinets meet their expectations, whether the quality of the equipment is guaranteed, and whether the user’s appeal can receive positive feedback in a timely manner.
At present, some brands are still inadequate in after-sales service, mainly because of the timeliness of solving problems, which is a relatively unfavorable factor for brand reputation and industry development.
With the development of battery swapping technology and the increasing emphasis on user services, swap charging station companies are working hard to provide users with practical and fast service guarantees. For example, TYCORUN ENERGY proposed the “whole industry chain self-operated” mode which can quickly respond to user needs, quickly feed back user problems to all aspects of software and hardware, to improve service efficiency and product iteration efficiency, which is worth learning from in the industry.
What is the user scale of the two-wheeler battery swapping?
In the field of electric two-wheelers, the new economy of instant delivery such as express delivery and takeaways has a huge rigid demand for battery swapping, and the battery swapping market has huge market potential. Data shows that the average daily mileage of a takeaway rider is as high as 120km, the average riding time is about 12.5h, and the daily charging times are 2-3 times or more.
It takes at least 6 to 8 hours to fully charge a lithium battery in the charging mode, and the battery swapping solves the problem of difficult charging for the rider. The whole process of taking out the battery, swapping the battery and loading to the electric bicycle takes less than 1 minute. Compared with charging for several hours at every turn, the battery swapping is extremely efficient in replenishing energy for takeaway riders, and is favored by them.
As of 2022, there are nearly 13 million riders in China, and each rider needs to change the battery at least 2-3 times a day. In the field of instant delivery, there is a rigid demand market with more than 26 million orders every day for the battery swapping. If the battery swapping can be truly popularized in China, there will be 300 million C-end users of electric two-wheelers bringing an increase to the battery swapping market. And if look at the world, the demand is double.
Prospects of two-wheeler battery swapping
In China, the popularization and standardization of electric two-wheelers has received more and more attention. Under the multiple encouragements of policy and continuous improvement of battery swapping companies, the application prospect of the two-wheeler battery swapping industry is broad.
In addition to solving the pain points of electric two-wheelers such as short battery life, slow charging, and limited charging places at the current stage, the battery swapping can also reduce the waste of power resources, prolong battery life, and promote the step-by-step development and recycling of batteries. Although the high lease amount of battery swapping makes it temporarily unfavorable to the public users, but as a swap station for takeaway riders, the market penetration rate of battery swapping stations will gradually increase.
With the gradual implementation of the standardization policy, battery swapping companies may gradually turn their attention to the C-end and launch more battery swapping modes that are beneficial to public users, aiming at 300 million electric two-wheelers market, and promote the large-scale application of the two-wheeler battery swapping.