Ola’s Swappable Batteries Are the Future of Urban Mobility

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of experiencing what the future of urban mobility could look like while testing Can-Am's new Pulse and Origin. As fun as these bikes were, I'm not sure how I'd get on living with one, considering their conventional charging systems. Like most people who live in a city, I reside in an apartment, and charging outlets are limited. 

So, although urban environments are the places where electric motorcycles with limited ranges make the most sense, for many people, they're completely unfeasible because they have nowhere to charge them.

Enter Ola Electric's new electric scooter range with swappable batteries that you can recharge inside your apartment. The all-new range consists of the Gig and the Gig+.

The base model Gig has drum brakes and is driven by a 250-watt electric motor, making it exempt from registration requirements in certain parts of the world. Unfortunately, this means it only has a top speed of around 15 mph, meaning this is realistically only an alternative for those using electric kick scooters. But there's one key difference—Range.

The single, swappable 1.5 kWh battery pack in the Gig gives it a 69-mile range, while none of the regular electric kick scooters will achieve anything close to that.

The Gig+ also stops with drum brakes but is for those who want to travel further and faster. Its 1.5 kW hub motor gives it a top speed of 28 mph, and it features a dual-battery setup. Ola claims that the Gig+ has a 50-mile range when using a single battery pack or a 97-mile range with the dual battery setup.

This isn't the first time we've seen electric motorcycles with swappable batteries, but it was an exciting concept when it was first introduced, and now that we see it catching on, it's hard to see affordable electric two-wheeled urban mobility going any other way. But there's still an issue, at least with these models.

If these scooters are to make waves in major cities across Europe and the US, they'll need to have considerably faster top speeds. As of now, Ola Electric models aren't available in the US, but here's hoping that they'll arrive soon with higher speeds.

Deliveries of the Gig and Gig+ will begin in India in April 2025.