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Industry veterans have welcomed the government’s decision to promote electric vehicles (EVs) in the country through a battery swapping policy in the coming days, saying it would boost the industry and start-ups.
“Considering the constraint for space in urban areas for setting up charging stations at scale, a battery swapping policy will be brought out and interoperability standards will be formulated,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech on Tuesday.
Till now, the two/ three-wheeler EV manufacturers were allowed to sell without battery and swapping was promoted. Swapping industry is also mushrooming since the introduction of such products in the market.
“With the Budget 2022-2023 announcement on bringing out a robust battery swapping policy, this is a vindication of the path that we have pioneered for Bounce. Government and policymakers have recognised battery swapping as the most effective solution to accelerate EV adoption in India by addressing range anxiety and hesitancy in adoption as well as considering the pragmatic aspects of setting up charging infrastructure – for instance, space constraints in urban areas for dedicated charging stations,” Vivekananda Hallekere, CEO and co-founder, Bounce, said.
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“A policy on battery swapping will help in wide scale adoption of batteries as a service. This will reduce upfront ownership costs of EVs and vehicle running costs. Since the cost of running EVs is cheaper, the overall running cost with battery service will work out to be more economical than usage of internal combustion engine (ICE) based vehicles,” Sameer Aggarwal, founder and CEO, RevFin, an EV financing e-lending platform on e-mobility, said.
Zero emission zones in cities will help bring prominence to EVs as well as provide incentive to purchase EVs to be able to use those zones, he added.
Varun Baxi, Research Analyst at Prabhudas Lilladher said: “Companies like Hero and Ashok Leyland can be major beneficiaries with their tie ups with Gogoro and Sun Mobility respectively, to develop the battery swapping infrastructure.”
“Battery swapping policy including interoperability could be a big booster for all the startups already working in this space. It could also help drive movement to electrification of fleets especially for last mile connectivity for both people and goods,” Rajeev Singh, Partner and Automotive leader at Deloitte India, said.
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