Although passenger electric vehicles have seen significant growth, especially in recent years, the same cannot be said for electric motorcycles. There are several reasons for this, but two of the biggest issues are energy density and lack of range. Swappable batteries are a potential solution, but in order for this to work, a robust support infrastructure needs to be created.
It is therefore encouraging to see a company like Yamaha Motor getting involved in this project. In addition to being part of the battery exchange company Gachaco in Japan and the Swappable Batteries Motorcycle Consortium (SBMC) in Europe, Yamaha has just announced that it is creating a new company in Europe to handle battery swapping for what it describes as “compact urban electric vehicles through subscription-based services.”
The new company is called Enyring. The name sounds like a shortened form of “energy ring,” which makes sense as a description of what Yamaha says the new company will do.
On one hand, it will offer users swappable batteries and subscription services for those batteries. On the other hand, it will also collaborate with other European leaders in recycling to reuse spent batteries, thus creating what it refers to as a closed-loop system that relies on recycled materials as valuable resources for the next generation of products.The headquarters of Enyring will be in Berlin, Germany. Although officially established as an entity in December 2023, Yamaha states that operations are unlikely to start before the first semester of 2025. A future operation in the Netherlands is also planned, with further growth likely in the future.
Source: https://www.rideapart.com
Enyring will serve compact low-speed electric city vehicles and will mainly focus on the electric bicycle space. Battery exchange stations will be installed in all cities where the company operates, so that subscribers can easily stop and swap their batteries and then continue their activity.
It is not clear at this time whether Enyring will add similar services for other low-speed electric vehicles, such as the Yamaha NEO. The Yamaha E01 does not use replaceable batteries, but other similar city vehicles could certainly benefit from a replaceable battery system like the one Enyring is proposing.
Even if Enyring strictly focuses on electric bicycles, the creation of a replaceable battery infrastructure like this would be significant for the advancement of similar systems for other two-wheeled electric vehicles in the future.
Once focusing initially on electric bicycles, plans for locations in Berlin and the Netherlands make perfect sense. Both Berlin and Amsterdam are cities where cycling is already well established and popular among a large portion of the population, so it seems like a natural choice.
