The two brands make smart sustainable solutions for e-motorbikes
Arrow Electronics, Inc. (Arrow) is a global technology solutions provider and the brand has just announced its support to Oyika Pte Ltd (Oyika), a Singapore start-up company, in building battery swapping and charging solutions for electric motorbikes (e-bikes).
This is excellent news as SouthEast Asia is one of the largest motorbike markets in the world with more than 85 percent of households in the region owning one, however, less than one percent of these numbers are electric bikes. Statista reports that the leading concern for buying an EV was the lack of an EV charging infrastructure.
Moreover, Oyika is helping Arrow by accelerating and lowering the barriers to EV adoption in the region by setting up a network of battery swapping stations and charging infrastructure for e-bikes. This system operates seamlessly with the swappable smart batteries and mobile application to go with it.
On top of that, the battery swapping service is bundled with third party e-bikes through affordable subscription plans. These plans are similar to telco subscription plans that bundle data and calls with third party mobile phones, not unlike what many Malaysians use as well.
Additionally, Oyika’s system helps Arrow to solve three primary pain points for EV adoption, which are range anxiety, long charging times and the upfront purchase cost of batteries. The smart batteries Arrow offers are powered by affordable and reliable advanced electronics which make adoption to EVs that much more feasible.
Oyika will then collect reliable and valuable data to improve the efficiency of its batteries and use that to enhance the performance and prolong the life of the batteries provided by Arrow.
Arrow has also established the NTU-Arrow Invent Lab in collaboration with the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in April 2022 and It is one of five worldwide Arrow Open Labs in key technology and innovation hubs. The purpose of this collaboration is to support local start-ups such as Oyika.
Furthermore, the NTU-Arrow Invent Lab is an innovation and experimental platform where start-ups develop ideas, unleash creativity and realize their inventions with the help of Arrow’s global resources.
Arrow also offers engineering guidance in power management, IoT (Internet of Things) telematics, battery management and component selection. Arrow engineers help Oyika with things like tracking vehicle speed and location, monitoring battery conditions as well as security and safety measures.
What do you think about this? Will this be enough to push for more EV adoption or do we still have far too much ground to cover before that?
