Amazon India and SUN Mobility to Add Faster to EV Fleet With Battery Swapping

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Amazon India is working together with SUN Mobility, a leading provider of energy infrastructure and services for electric vehicles (EVs), to expand the deployment of EVs integrated with battery swapping technology for its transportation and logistics services. These EVs will contribute to Amazon India’s commitment of adding 10,000 electric vehicles in its India delivery fleet by 2025, announced in 2020. The company continues to work with local OEMs like SUN Mobility to build its EV fleet. In India, B2B firms and large logistics firms have been one of the largest adopters of electric vehicles, as part of global moves or even local state level interventions.

Leveraging SUN Mobility’s MaaS (mobility-as-a-service) offering, the deployment will provide Amazon India and its delivery service partners (DSPs) with a state-of-the-art electric mobility solution that is integrated with smart batteries, along with access to a wide network of SWAP POINTS™ (‘SWAP POINT™’ refer to the location where a SUN Mobility’s battery swapping station is deployed). Currently, SUN Mobility is setting up its SWAP POINTS™ across its customer locations including Amazon warehouses in major cities like Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, and Hyderabad.

With battery swapping technology, the discharged battery of EVs can be rapidly swapped for a fully charged unit, removing the delay involved in recharging. This helps to address issues such as range anxiety and the requirement of setting up dedicated charging infrastructure which is constrained by space and cost.

The expanded deployment will further bolster Amazon’s efforts to implement more sustainable practices in its operations, as well as contribute to its Climate Pledge goals – a commitment to achieve net-zero carbon by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement. As part of an existing pilot program, SUN Mobility had already successfully deployed over 100 loaders powered by swappable batteries with Amazon India’s delivery network partners for rapid deliveries, which the two companies now plan to replicate in more metro cities and in other operational areas. SUN Mobility’s offering will enable a high EV fleet uptime for Amazon’s network partners via two-minute battery swaps, supporting Amazon’s expanding logistics network without being constrained by charging infrastructure.

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Commenting on the deployment, Abhinav Singh, Director – Customer Fulfilment, Supply Chain and Global Specialty Fulfilment, Amazon India said: “The collaboration with SUN Mobility represents another step in our journey towards reducing carbon emissions and the environmental impact of delivery operations. We will continue to invest in the electrification of our delivery fleet as we work towards the goal of adding 10,000 EVs across partner platforms to our fleet by 2025. With the government also encouraging the development of sustainable and innovative business models for ‘Battery or Energy as a Service’, we are committed to supporting India’s progress in the e-mobility industry to achieve its environmental sustainability goals.”

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Chetan Maini, Co-Founder, and Chairman of SUN Mobility said, “We are delighted by the opportunity of collaborating with an e-commerce giant like Amazon India. We believe that this deployment will enable us to tangibly impact the rapidly growing e-commerce and delivery segment by making ‘refueling’ of electric vehicles faster, cheaper and more convenient for fleet operators.”

SUN Mobility aims to onboard over a million vehicles by 2025, the accomplishment of which will be accelerated through its MaaS offering. It has already commenced the deployment of its solutions to eCommerce and goods delivery players across major cities such as Delhi NCR, Bangalore, and Chandigarh and plans to further expand to other cities across the country.