Bingo Technologies will unveil its universal, swappable battery for last-mile delivery and ride-hail providers at the Milan Motorcycle Show next week.
Customers can select from a broad menu of compatible electric vehicles built by the U.S. start-up’s OEM partners.
Mopeds, tuk-tuks, buggies and the ‘E1’ can all take the battery – the latter being a lightweight, four-wheel, four-seat passenger car that falls under Europe’s L7e classification, just like the popular Citroen Ami.
Bingo says that using its universal battery not only eliminates range anxiety and vehicle recharging downtime but also makes scaling up with different vehicle forms easy and cost-effective. Also on display at the Expo will be Bingo’s modular battery charging stations, as the start-up looks to remove all road-blocks to the electrification of urban fleets.
The battery itself is a 2kWh pack with built-in GPS and 4G, IP67 protection rating and real-time health monitoring.
In the past 18 months, Bingo has deployed “multiple thousands” of swappable smart batteries, and more than 100 battery charging stations, to customers in five countries across Asia and Africa, according to the start-up’s Co-founder Alex Nesic.
Bingo’s largest single customer is in Africa which is using 1,000 Bingo electric vehicles, mostly two wheeled mopeds and motorcycles, for grocery and package delivery.
Zag asked Nesic how the universal battery has made scaling up faster. “One of the main drivers of adoption and growth has been that running swappable battery electric motorcycles is significantly more cost-effective for fleet operators and riders alike, compared to using fossil-fuel vehicles, resulting in more profitability all around,” he said. “Thanks to Bingo’s “one battery, any vehicle” solution, this customer is able to easily integrate these different electric vehicle forms into the same fleet and charging infrastructure. And because Bingo’s system allows batteries to be swapped in under 60 seconds, eliminating downtime for recharging, for the first time an electrified last-mile transportation fleet can be utilised for more time in any given operational period than a fossil-fuel equivalent.”
This customer is currently experiencing “phenomenal growth” and expects to scale its Bingo fleet by five times by the end of 2025.
Bingo is working with a number of OEM partners which include Chinese automaker BYD to produce its modular Bingo battery charging stations, and Ampace is the production partner for the smart battery.
