Andhra Pradesh: Battery Swapping Station Inaugurated In Tirupati

To make the temple town of Tirupati a zero-emission zone, the New and Renewable Energy Development Corporation of Andhra Pradesh (NREDCAP) inaugurated a battery-swapping station in Tirupati.

With plans to expand the battery swapping network to 20 ‘Hot-Swap stations’ and 200 vehicles in the city in the coming months, NREDCAP is going to build swap stations at the Tirupati railway station, APSRTC central bus station, Alipiri, Srinivasa Mangapuram, Srikalahasti and Kanipakam.

The network would be expanded to Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Kakinada and Rajamahendravaram in a phased manner, reports The Hindu.

“Battery swapping, a process that gets rid of manual intervention in the form of plugging connectors, also makes economic sense for the auto fraternity because their operational expenditure drops by 30 per cent and their earnings start to increase,” an NREDCAP official said.

“An autorickshaw can exchange the discharged battery for a charged one in just two minutes and pay online,” said Arun Sreyas, co-founder of RACEnergy.

Earlier in 2019, Amaron batteries also launched electric rickshaws and a battery swapping centre in the temple city, with exclusively women drivers, as a pilot project, in partnership with the Municipal Corporation of Tirupati.