E-Bike Battery Swapping Expands In New York City

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The EV battery swapping movement has been gathering steam around the world, with one key market being the millions of e-bikes on the road. Things are finally beginning to take off here in the US, too. A modest pilot project focusing on battery safety for e-bike delivery riders in New York City has been deemed a success, and it is expanding to all five boroughs.

Fire Safety & Battery Swapping

According to the New York City Department of Transportation, the lithium-ion batteries used in e-bikes were responsible for 900 fires in New York City between 2022 and 2025. Properly certified and maintained e-bike batteries are safe by and large, but non-certified batteries accounted for many of the fires. In addition to property damage, 30 people were killed by fires attributed to e-bike batteries, and 400 were injured.

Public battery swapping stations are one potential solution. They provide drivers with a fully charged, certified and properly maintained battery, reducing if not eliminating the need to charge a battery at home.

Even without the safety angle, battery swapping could also benefit e-bike riders who value increased uptime and the guarantee of a full charge with every swap. That sounds like common sense, but city planners in New York needed some hard data before moving ahead with a full scale swapping station plan. To assess rider attitudes towards swapping stations, DOT designed a pilot project consisting of five stations in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The pilot launched in March of 2024. Reporting on the first five months of the pilot program in August of that year, DOT was already able to make a strong case for scale-up. A selected group of 120 riders who participated in the program made more than 8,000 swaps among the five stations in the five-month period.

“The results of an onboarding survey administered by NYC DOT found that 84 percent of pilot participants were previously charging their e-bike batteries at home,” the agency noted.

The stations were also equipped with charging ports, enabling riders to recharge batteries without a swap. DOT recorded almost 1,000 recharging sessions among the five stations during the first five months of the pilot project.

In terms of reducing fire risks, the numbers showed that public swapping stations can make a significant difference. More than half of the riders participating in pilot said that they stopped charging at home. In addition, others said that they reduced home charging.

Riders indicated the public stations enabled them to spend more time at work, too. As an added convenience, they also reported that they no longer needed to carry an extra battery to complete a day’s work.

“Findings from the pilot show that food delivery workers are enthusiastically participating and can now be more productive, and that access to these charging stations has resulted in a reduction, and some elimination, of home charging,” DOT stated, adding that there were no safety-related issues or other complaints about the stations during the pilot phase.

More Battery Swapping For NYC

By the end of last year, DOT firmed up its plans for expanding out of the pilot stage and into a full-fledged citywide program consisting of 25 swapping stations, focusing on neighborhoods with the highest traffic.

“All battery-swapping cabinets will be equipped with fire suppression features, real-time battery health monitoring, and automatic alerts to the system provider to enhance safety,” DOT noted in a press statement on November 18. In the release, the areas under consideration for swapping stations included most of Manhattan along with Downtown Brooklyn, the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, Long Island City in Queens, and parts of the South Bronx.

Property owners can also apply for a revocable consent agreement with DOT, enabling them to install battery swapping and charging stations for their tenants. That program is administered by DOT in coordination with the Fire Department and the Department of Buildings.

Even More Battery Swapping Stations For NYC

DOT states that the public swapping station network will be available to e-bike riders on a membership basis, with the cost to be determined. The agency has not updated the program since the November announcement (unless I missed something), but two of its private sector partners are not shy about tooting their horns. On February 27, the German battery swapping firm Swobbee announced that it is ready to roll along with its connectivity collaborator, the US branch of the global firm SINBON.

Swobbee collaborated on the initial pilot project, and last year the company began installing swapping stations in Jersey City, New Jersey, as well as New York City. “After the pilot demonstrated a safer, fire-compliant alternative to traditional e-bike charging, Swobbee received approval to scale across all five boroughs, with more than dozens of additional stations planned by the end of the year,” the company stated.

I’m reaching out to Swobbee for more details on the scale-up plan, as there seems to be a word missing from “more than dozens.” In the meantime, the company does provide an update on the rider use numbers. Including riders in Jersey City, Swobbee has seen about 150,000 battery swaps since March of 2025.

“The pilot demonstrated that battery swapping can significantly improve safety while making daily work easier for delivery riders. After its success, we received the green light to expand across all five boroughs,” affirmed Sowbbee CEO Thomas Duscha.

What About Cars?

The US has some catching up to do as the rest of the world embraces the battery swapping movement. E-bikes and other two-wheelers are the low-hanging fruit because riders can easily change the battery by hand. Passenger cars and trucks present a next-level challenge, but that nut is also beginning to crack in China and other hotspots around the world.

Don’t look for four-wheeled swapping to go mainstream in the US any time soon. Although Tesla planted a swapping station in California back in 2013, it was barely a trial (and some claim it was simply to get some government funding) and CEO Elon Musk soon lost interest in the idea. The US firm Ample picked up the ball, but the company reportedly filed for bankruptcy on December 16 last year.

As for elsewhere, keep an eye on the German firm E-Haul, which has developed a fully automated swapping system for heavy-duty trucks. E-Haul also notes that its swapping stations can pull double duty as grid storage assets.