New Delhi: Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) and Bounce Infinity today joined hands to set up Bounce’s battery swapping stations across Bharat Petroleum fuel stations in a phased manner. The former aims to set up 3000 stations across the top 10 cities.
This partnership focuses on urban markets and complements BPCL’s overall EV charging roadmap of setting up fast-charging corridors across major highways in the country inter-connecting major cities and economic centers and will have a network of 7000 conveniently located fast-charging stations along with a host of customer amenities in the country in the next 2-3 years, stated S. Ravi, Executive Director In-Charge (Retail), BPCL.
The new framework will cater not only to the company’s retail business but will also support the interoperable partners (2W’s, 3W’s & other OEMs) for ease of mobility across geographies and form factors i.e two-wheelers & three-wheelers. Battery swapping as a solution would also support those 2W’s & 3W’s that have been converted to EV from ICE.
Vivekananda Hallakere, Co-Founder & CEO, Bounce, said, “This partnership reiterates our commitment towards a cleaner and pollution-free country by making our network accessible to consumers at the same scale and convenience as refueling. We look forward to a long-lasting partnership between Bounce Infinity and BPCL.”
The Infinity swapping stations work on similar principles to a fuel station. Here, Infinity battery swapping stations will have charged and ready-to-go batteries that customers can easily swap with their near-empty batteries in under a few minutes. With this infrastructure in place, customers wouldn’t have to wait for the scooter to charge, be anxious about the range or remember to charge it.
Consumers looking to swap their drained batteries can search for the nearest swapping location on the Bounce App.
Bounce Infinity has so far seen over 1.2M battery swaps on its energy infrastructure, it said.
Commenting on the partnership, P.S. Ravi added, “BPCL has always been at the forefront of providing all forms of energy solutions for personal and commercial mobility to our customers. As we pace ourselves for an exciting phase of energy transition towards clean energy, we are delighted to partner with Bounce Infinity, a leading start-up offering innovative and state-of-the-art smart battery swapping solutions for 2-wheeler and 3-wheeler EV customers.
This partnership with Bharat Petroleum, which runs a distributed network of more than 20,000 fuel stations reiterates the company’s promise of making the swapping network accessible to consumers.
BPCL has already taken the lead by setting up fast-charging highway corridors starting with the 900 Km Chennai-Trichy-Madurai-Chennai route. The alliance with Bounce Infinity will mark BPCL’s strong presence in urban markets with a network of battery swapping stations.
“Battery swapping with pre-charged batteries from Bounce Infinity will significantly reduce the vehicle downtime adding customer convenience and reducing range anxiety. The interoperability feature offered by Bounce Infinity will help us to serve a larger spread of EV customers and will help in the growth of this important battery swapping segment in the EV space in the country,” added P.S. Ravi.
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“Just as petrol pumps are seen everywhere, EV charging and swapping stations will also be seen everywhere in the coming times,” the minister said.