Yamaha Mio-sized e-scooter might be coming soon, real soon

Yamaha e-scooter to use battery swapping technology

Back in March at the Inside Racing Bike Festival and Trade Show (IRBF) held at the World Trade Center Manila, Kymco showcased to the public an electric motorcycle featuring promising technology – battery swapping – that could solve the biggest problem of e-Bikes: short range and long charging times.

The idea being, instead of plugging the e-motorcycle at available charging stations, the rider could simply remove the battery and swap it with an available fully-charged battery at a battery terminal / bank, which roughly takes the same amount of time to pump fuel at a gas station. 

Earlier this year, the “Big 4” Japanese motorcycle giants agreed to standardize electric motorcycle technology. Now, Yamaha is following in the footsteps of Honda to launch an e-Scooter with battery swapping technology. 

Much of this tech will be based on leading Taiwanese e-scooter manufacturer, Gogoro. Last year, Yamaha announced that it was teaming up with Gogoro to develop an e-Scooter with batteries that can be swapped. This week, the Yamaha EC-05 made its debut. The e-Motorcycle is designed by Yamaha and made by .Gogoro. It could potentially use Gogoro's batteries and be compatible with the upcoming Gogoro battery stations.

Though the actual specs have yet to be released, it is speculated that the new EC-05 will have similar specifications to the current Gogoro 2 Series e-Scooters. It will have a range of almost 100 kilometers on a fully charged battery and reach a top speed of 100 km/h. 

Starting August, the EC-05 will be available at Yamaha Taiwan showrooms (SRP to be announced). Yamaha also plans to deploy the EC-05, along with the battery swapping stations around the world “soon”.