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A Portable, Convenient, Swappable Renewable Energy Source: Honda's Mobile Power Packs

Trials will begin this year in Indonesia

By Rain Noe - August 15, 2018

in Sustainable Design

With their Mobile Power Pack, Honda's got a brilliant plan to make renewable, zero-emissions energy super-convenient. To see if their plan will work, the company is beginning trials this year in heavily-populated, heavily-polluted Indonesia, the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Indonesia is the world's third largest market for motorcycles, most of which run on gasoline. So this December Honda will be trialing electric motorcycles there, powered by their Mobile Power Packs, which resemble electric jerrycans.

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The idea is that rather than having to plug in and wait while their bikes top off, end users can simply stop at a Honda charging facility, pull a nearly-empty battery out of their bike and swap it for a freshly-charged one.

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These Mobile Battery Packs would be charged from four different renewable energy sources: Solar, wind, water power or biomass.

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Should the trials show promise, it's not difficult to imagine these battery packs replacing gasoline generators as emergency domestic power backup sources, in addition to powering small vehicles. Everyone from motorcyclists to disaster preppers to campers could benefit from these.

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George Mokray

6 years ago

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Gee, this was the same idea that the first automotive taxis in NYC used back before the first turn of the 20th century. Those were electric vehicles. They'd return to the garage to change battery packs the way Honda is proposing for its electric motorcycles.

"The first taxicab company in New York City was the Samuel's Electric Carriage and Wagon Company (E.C.W.C.), which began running 12 electric hansom cabs in July 1897. The company ran until 1898 with up to 62 cabs operating until it was reformed by its financiers to form the Electric Vehicle Company. The company then built the Electrobat electric car, and had up to 100 taxicabs running in total by 1899.1899 also saw a number of notable firsts for the Electric Vehicle Company. On May 20, 1899, Jacob German, driving an electric taxicab received the first speeding ticket in the United States. Later that year, on September 13, Henry Bliss became the first victim of an automotive accident in the United States when he was hit by an electric taxicab as he was helping a friend from a streetcar. By the early 1900s the Electric Vehicle company was running up to 1,000 electric taxicabs on the streets of New York City until, in January 1907, a fire destroyed 300 of these vehicles which, in conjunction with the Panic of 1907 caused the company to collapse."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City#Late_1890s

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Gabriel Tam

6 years ago

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I thought Gogoro in Taiwan has been doing this since 2015 with over 700 battery swap 'GoStations' that operates 24/7. They are trialling scooter sharing service in Berlin, Paris and Madrid as well. But most of all as a designer, their scooter looks great, looks well engineered and the price seems to be very reasonable.

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Juan Cano

6 years ago

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I've always thought swappable battery packs would make the mainstream vehicle driving public switch to electric cars and help get over the fear if running out of juice. We are all familiar with putting a new battery in our remote controls and other.

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