New York City is testing battery swapping for e-bikes to prevent fires

E-bike charging stations are increasingly installed in tourist areas like restaurants and museums. However, charging an empty e-bike battery is not only a time-consuming process, it also carries the risk of a potentially life-threatening battery fire.

During the charging process, short circuits and overheating can occur, which can lead to a fire. Although this problem is also present when batteries are stored, many of the fires in New York appear to have started during the charging process in residential buildings.

For example, the number of battery fires in New York has increased ninefold between 2019 and 2023 resulting not only in injuries, but in some cases also in fatalities. That's why the city is piloting battery-swapping stations with two startups, Popwheels and Swobbee, and a safer charging concept with Swiftmile.

Several stations will be made available to e-bike riders from delivery services around the city as part of the pilot. Riders will be able to simply unlock the door of the station via an app, swap their empty lithium-ion battery for a fully charged one in less than a minute and continue their journey. Not only is this likely to be safer, but could also save time by eliminating the need to charge and wait.

Whether the new system will be accepted remains to be seen. The project involves 100 drivers and will run for six months. If successful, to cover all of New York's 60,000 delivery drivers, several hundred stations would need to be installed around the city.

Maybe it leads to an even larger vision of battery swapping as a part of an urban future. But for now, it’s solving a very real and immediate problem that delivery workers have around how they can work a full day, and earn a reasonable living, and do it without having to put their lives at risk for battery fires.

- David Hammer, co-founder and president of Popwheels

In contrast to the US, the concept of battery swapping is much more widespread in Asia for a large number of small electric vehicles: Chinese car manufacturer Nio, for example, offers numerous swapping stations for cars and the company Gogoro enables around 400,000 battery changes per day for e-scooters in Taiwan.

In Germany, Berlin-based startup Swobbee and Estonian sharing provider Bolt launched a battery charging and swapping pilot project for the commercial operation of a Berlin e-scooter sharing fleet in 2022. There has also been a small campaign for a battery swapping subscription model for Urban Drivestyle's utility e-bikes in Berlin, with around 100 test users.

However, the feasibility of battery swapping stations may become less straightforward once there is no longer a fleet of identical bikes, but many different bikes owned by individuals. It remains to be seen whether the concept will catch on, or whether other solutions will have to be found in the longer term.