Kymco Ionex – a new reality for electric mobility?

It is no mystery that one of the central points of investigation in the electric mobility sector are the batteries. There are several important questions surrounding batteries: their weight, their cost, the technology underlying them, their capacity, charging speed, autonomy/capacity and, last but not least, wear and tear, or the normal course of charge and discharge cycles that cause the battery to lose performance over time, reducing its actual capacity. It is precisely in this area that manufacturers are focusing their efforts, creating partnerships for standardizing batteries that allow, at the very least, city vehicles to eliminate some of the less pleasant aspects of electric mobility from the start; in fact, due to the so-called “replaceable” batteries (interchangeable and replaceable in real time with another battery of the same type at special exchange stations), the more or less prolonged charging break is replaced by the few seconds needed to remove the depleted battery and insert the new one that will be 100% charged. Source: https://electrek.co

An interchangeable and standardized battery can still have another significant advantage: if it is replaced periodically or if it is deposited from time to time at an exchange station that is responsible for verifying its effectiveness, it can eliminate at the root the risk of the user encountering, over time, a battery that is no longer in good condition and that is no longer able to ensure the design capacity and nominal autonomy. This issue is by no means secondary, especially when we consider that these batteries can be very expensive for the user. From this perspective, the user no longer owns the battery, but “buys” its use.

The approach that Kymco has been showing since 2018 and that will be reiterated in its evolution during EICMA 2023 regarding its electric brand Ionex, also addresses these issues: the battery goes from being a “good” to a “service” and a whole ecosystem is born. The Ionex Battery-as-a-Service Solution for Energy Companies is indeed just one of the three pillars of Kymco’s strategy regarding electric mobility, which is complemented by the Ionex Battery Measurement Unit for EV Manufacturers and the Ionex Power Station for Battery Exchange Network Operators.

In summary, with the Ionex ecosystem, Kymco aims to be an intermediary for all stakeholders in individual electric mobility, seeking to address all the challenges on the battery front that we mentioned at the beginning: On one hand, users and network operators have Ionex Stations, where they can exchange vehicle batteries, on the other hand, there are companies that may offer the battery as a service, and at the other vertex of this triangle, we find the Battery Management Unit, which is a standardized electronic module to facilitate the integration of Ionex batteries into any electric vehicle project. In this sense, it is symptomatic of what Karim Donnez, CEO of LiveWire (which has long had a partnership with Kymco on the electric theme), commented in a statement: “The Ionex BMU allows electric vehicle manufacturers to meet customer expectations for the ‘electric era’, probably emphasizing the fact that this standardization allows for considerable savings that can be translated into affordable price lists.”