This electric motorcycle company just hit 10 million battery swaps – and it’s profitable

A Brazilian company called Vammo, which runs electric motorcycles with swappable batteries, just passed 10 million battery swaps and says it's now profitable. Instead of waiting for a battery to charge, riders pull into one of roughly 1,000 swap stations in São Paulo and trade a depleted pack for a charged one. The company has grown to more than 10,000 active riders and plans to expand beyond São Paulo into the city of Campinas, with hopes of eventually covering more of Brazil and Latin America.

This is mostly industry news rather than something that changes what's available in the US right now. But it's a useful data point for anyone curious about battery swapping as an alternative to plug-in charging, especially for vehicles used heavily throughout the day, like delivery motorcycles. Vammo says its riders save about 35% compared with running a typical gas motorcycle, mainly through lower energy and maintenance costs, and the company is rolling out newer swap stations that use software to manage charging based on demand, weather, and battery temperature.

For US homeowners, this doesn't translate into a rebate or program you can use today. It does show that battery-swapping networks, long discussed as a possible model for electric scooters and motorcycles, can work at a large scale and turn a profit, which may matter if similar services eventually reach American cities.