Cost comparison of battery swapping, point charging, and ICE two-wheelers in India

This paper evaluates if electric two-wheelers in India with the battery-swapping option have achieved cost parity relative to electric two-wheelers with the point charging option and with conventional gasoline two-wheelers. The authors consider this by estimating the total cost of ownership (TCO) of two-wheelers across three use cases—personal use, ride-hailing, and last-mile delivery. Results show that for all three use cases, the electric two-wheelers with point-charging and battery-swapping options are considerably cheaper than the gasoline two-wheeler. Additionally, while two-wheelers with battery swapping are costlier than two-wheelers with point charging for the personal and last-mile delivery use cases, the opposite is true in the case of ride-hailing operation, where the TCO of the electric Okinawa iPraise+ with swapping is 15% less than that of the Okinawa iPraise+ with point charging and 3% less than the Ather 450X with point charging. The fueling cost is the largest cost contributor across all types of uses for the battery-swapping option. If this cost is reduced, the battery-swapping model will become more cost-attractive because it has the unique advantages of zero opportunity cost and zero battery-replacement cost.