Perodua might be the first with 5S centres… the 5th ‘s’ for ‘swap’!
It’s no secret that one of the most expensive components of an electric vehicle is the battery pack. These are said to sometimes make up 30-40% of the bill of materials for the entire electric vehicle. Carmakers have come up with some solutions to address the problem but few seem satisfactory – LFP chemistry is now the leading solution but others include just making the rest of the car smaller and cheaper to offset the battery cost. So, how will Perodua go about selling a sub-RM100,000 electric vehicle in Malaysia?
One solution could be battery swapping. Rumours have been floating around that the battery supplier Perodua is in talks with for their 2025 EV debut is none other than CATL, a giant in the industry and a partner of Chinese automaker NIO whose business model revolves around battery swapping technology.
Battery swapping technology would be an interesting way to address many of the concerns around EV adoption. The EV charging network is one – it requires a huge investment by third party players with no guarantee of any return. The other is the cost of the product itself, as we mentioned earlier. Buying an EV means buying a large battery pack as well.
With battery swapping tech, Perodua could conceivably sell you an electric vehicle for what it would cost them to produce something LIKE a Myvi – at maybe RM50,000 to RM70,000 WITHOUT a battery. Then they would charge you a monthly subscription to lease the battery and use their battery swapping facilities.
Of course all of this is conjecture. It’s a slow news day and one news item that drew me to writing this article was CATL’s new battery swap ecosystem in China from last week called the ‘Choco-swap’ ecosystem.
With this system, two standard Choco-Swap batteries named #20 and #25 with both LFP and NMC chemistry available at various capacities. It’s a little confusing but here’s what options are available:
| #20 LFP | #20 NMC | #25 LFP | #25 NMC |
| 42kWh | 52kWh | 56kWh | 70kWh |
| 400km | 500km | 500km | 600km |
These #20 and #25 battery pack options fit A0-class and A/B-class vehicles – essentially the size of vehicles Perodua has had a long history building.
The other piece of the puzzle that fits into this narrative is Perodua’s recent push into connected services. Earlier this year, they made booking a Perodua something you could do online. Earlier this week, they announced Telekom Malaysia as their strategic partner to ready their dealer network and own facilities for the next generation of connected services and digital technologies. They’ve also tested out a subscription model for their Ativa Hybrid, perhaps working out the kinks in a future batteries-as-a-service subscription model? Of course the challenge is rolling out enough battery-swapping stations… maybe 4S outlets will feature these by default and be upgraded to 5S… one more ‘s’ for swap!
It’s an interesting time to keep your eye out for Perodua’s future EV developments. All possibilities are extremely ground breaking for their first electric vehicle. Either reaching out beyond their technical partner for donor EV, or building something ground up combining DNGA tech with Chinese battery tech, or being an equal partner in the development process of something alongside their technical partners for a global market.
