Honda is officially in the swappable battery game for electric motorcycles

Honda has announced that it has delivered its first Honda Power Pack Exchanger e: battery swapping station to Gachaco, Inc., a joint venture in Tokyo. The Exchanger e: allows riders with compatible batteries to trade their used battery for a fully charged one in minutes.

The concept is not new. We've previously written about Gogoro, a company that has more than 500,000 subscribers to its battery swapping service in Taiwan, as well as significant operations in Israel, India, and elsewhere. In fact, Honda's Exchanger looks very much like a Gogoro GoStation. Honda represents new competition, which could be bad news for Gogoro, despite Gogoro's huge head start. Gogoro has yet to achieve consistent profitability.

Japanese motorcycle manufacturers, along with KTM and Piaggio, developed a battery standard to make swapping more broadly applicable.

Exchanging an old battery for a charged one is simple and quick. Users have a smart card that carries the information about their vehicle. They tap the screen on the exchanger with their card and LEDs indicate which batteries are fully charged and are right for their vehicle. Old batteries begin charging as soon as they are inserted into the charging station.

There are some interesting features built into the Honda Power Pack Exchange e:. Before going to the exchanger, subscribers can use a smartphone app to check on availability of batteries, which is monitored centrally. There's a cooling system to prevent heat damage to the batteries. What if the power goes off? One battery in the exchanger can power the mechanism, so subscribers can still get previously charged batteries and keep going.

Not surprisingly, both Honda and Gogoro are looking at the huge motorcycle market in India, which is also a place with some of the worst air pollution in the world and would benefit greatly from expanded use of electric vehicles. Gogoro partnered with Hero, the world's largest manufacturer of motorcycles, and Honda has already started a battery-sharing service for rickshaw taxis in India.

Swappable batteries work best in an urban setting, where they provide a quick and convenient alternative for city residents who likely don't have a private garage where they can charge an electric scooter overnight. We have a long way to go before swappable batteries provide a viable option in large geographic areas, but keep two things in mind: Cities are where electric motorcycles are best as transportation options, anyway, and 110 years ago, similarly early days for internal combustion, it wasn't that easy to find a place to buy gasoline, either, even if it did cost 12 cents a gallon.