E-mobility and automotive manufacturer Yamaha has announced its intention to launch an e-bike battery subscription service in Europe. The idea is that users will no longer need to charge their batteries at home and won’t need to face the cost of replacing the battery at the end of its lifecycle. A similar light electric vehicle (LEV) battery swap scheme began in Japan last year, founded by Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha, and called ‘Gachaco’.
Yamaha’s new company, Enyring, will have its operations based in Berlin, Germany and will involve collaboration between Yamaha Motor and “strategic partner companies”. They also hope to expand the operation into the Netherlands.
The system will work through battery stations dotted around cities, in which subscribers can swap out their batteries when they need recharging or replacing. It will target compact urban vehicles in the “low-speed range” which Yamaha says will mean mainly e-bikes.
Batteries at the end of their usable life cycle, will be, "reused as storage batteries, disassembled into cells, recycled, and reused as new batteries.”
LEV battery swapping has yet to take the UK by storm, but with a number of schemes opening up in Europe, including Swobbee, perhaps we'll be lucky enough to see something similar in the future.
