Ola Electric Swappable Battery Design Patent Filed

The patented swappable battery could be used for its B2B electric scooters

Ola Electric has filed a patent for the design of swappable batteries and this has made it the third EV maker in the country to take a step in this direction after Vida and Gogoro.   

Swappable batteries are quite a convenient feature for electric scooters to have as one can simply take the battery out of the vehicle and charge it at their home instead of going to a particular charging station or even going through the process of installing a charging point at the ground floor of their apartments. A battery swapping infrastructure spread throughout cities can further increase the convenience factor of having swappable batteries, similar to the battery swapping network launched by Gogoro in Delhi and Goa last year, as it’ll reduce the downtime compared to charging the scooter in a charging station.

That said, we think it is quite unlikely that Ola scooters will get swappable batteries anytime in the near future. Why is that so? Because the EV maker’s current lineup of scooters come with banana-shaped fixed batteries that are mounted under the floorboard, while the shape of the patented swappable battery is boxy. Also Ola’s Hypercharger network has not been fully set up yet and the EV maker would obviously like to address that first before planning for any battery swapping network of its own. 

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Recently, Ola Electric has also patented the design of a commercial electric scooter for the B2B (Business-to-Business) space and a three-wheeler and those vehicles are more likely to get the swappable batteries first before its current lineup of scooters. But, even if those vehicles do get that tech, it is still a few years away before we see one of those vehicles getting launched. Because it will take some time for the EV maker to develop the battery technology and the supporting battery swapping network to make it feasible for themselves.