Strategic Insight Series
Nikesh Bisht: Building Swappable Electric cars with Battery‑as‑a‑Service
Co‑founder & CEO at Blinq Mobility. Second‑time EV entrepreneur. Redefining urban transport with safe, affordable EV pods and ‘true’ battery‑as‑a‑service. Mission: make EVs an obvious choice for everyone by fixing range anxiety, battery costs and user trust.
EV Pods
Battery Swapping
Modular Batteries
Micro EVs
Affordability & Efficiency
1) Why this conversation matters
EVs & battery costs: the next adoption battleground
India’s EV journey now hinges on two practical challenges: range anxiety and battery cost. Nikesh believes solving these requires more than software; it demands re‑thinking of the entire vehicle ecosystem. His vision is to make EVs an obvious choice for the masses by building lightweight, safe vehicles with swappable battery modules. For users, that means paying only for energy used; for investors and OEMs, it means a platform that scales across segments and eliminates the biggest adoption barriers. This page captures Nikesh’s mission, his hard lessons from EV components to car making, and the playbook he’s deploying at Blinq Mobility to standardize swappable batteries, prove business cases, and build an ecosystem where energy companies manage the battery and car companies focus on ride quality.
About Nikesh Bisht
Nikesh is an EV Evangelist and serial entrepreneur who has dedicated his career to fixing the practical roadblocks to EV adoption. After a first stint building EV components, he returned to the drawing board with a fresh question: “If EVs are so good, why aren’t they everywhere?” His answer? Design a product that removes the range anxiety and cost entirely from the user’s perspective.
Credentials & awards
- Education: Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Delhi
- Experience: 9+ years across EV component design, battery pack design, and micromobility products.
- Honours: Featured on Young Founders for urban EV cars.
- Mission: Create safe, eco‑friendly EV pods that blend safety of a car with affordability and efficiency.
Quick Snapshot
Years in EV & entrepreneurship
9+
Core Focus
Swappable Electric cars; modular battery packs; battery‑as‑a‑service
Recent role
Co‑founder & CEO, Blinq Mobility (2024–present)
Previous experience
High voltage systems, EV Battery pack Design, Battery Management Systems, Power Electronics.
Education
Mechanical Engineering, IIT Delhi
2) Journey & lens
From components to microcars — a systems thinker’s arc
Nikesh’s path has been about learning what breaks and redesigning around it. He started by designing EV Intelligence components in his first startup and scaled it to a ~20M business; These early experiences taught him how battery chemistry and thermal management create the real limits. Blinq Mobility is his second big swing: build a modular ecosystem where energy and vehicles separate cleanly. He believes cars should be lightweight and safe, while batteries should be treated as commoditised energy containers; much like we use petroleum products today.
Component roots
Starting in EV supply chains, Nikesh learned about battery design, interfacing connectors, and vehicle integration. He saw firsthand how the size and cost of packs make or break the business case.
Bridging hardware & service
His journey has repeatedly reminded him that building is not enough; you must align product with financing and service. This led to the conviction that batteries should be treated as company managed assets, and the cars can be privately owned by the users.
The EV pod vision
Blinq’s first offering is a compact, four seater car. It uses a 20 kWh pack that latches under the chassis. A single command releases the pack for swapping; OEMs focus on safety and ride quality while energy firms manage the packs.
3) Brutal truths
What’s broken and needs design, not slogans
3.1 Range anxiety is a design problem
Indian cities are dense; average taxi rides are short. Why haul 400 kg of battery for a 6 km ride? Smaller cars with modular packs remove waste while giving comfort and safety to passengers.
3.2 Batteries aren’t cars
More than half the purchase price goes to the pack. Treating it as an asset you must own slows adoption and locks you into future replacement costs. Batteries should be containers of energy; where users pay for what they consume.
3.3 Standardisation can’t be mandated
Government-led standards often come at a cost of freezing innovation too soon. Nikesh argues standards organically emerge from companies who actually swap: once the right products and models prove the economics and reliability, consortia will form to agree on packs, connectors, and communication protocols.
3.4 Service matters more than hardware
Uptime (days out of service) is far below acceptable; cars wait weeks for software or BMS fixes. Light, modular cars with fewer parts and swappable packs can return to service in minutes, not weeks.
4) Strategic solutions
A mini‑playbook for swappable EVs & microcar rollout
Design for swap
- Latch‑and‑release pack mounts integrated into chassis; Fully Automated process within 5 min.
- Floating connectors that auto‑align despite small misalignment; 4–5 spare pins reserved for future communications.
- Standard module (e.g. 20 kWh) that can be ganged up (e.g. 2× for bigger vehicles ) to avoid bespoke packs.
Batteries as public utilities
- Independent energy companies own & rent packs; OEMs build the vehicle.
- Battery packs are maintained by the energy arm, controlled charging and better health control and users pay per kWh used without any additional anxiety.
- Swapping stations become mini grid buffers; we partner with solar farms or UI energy interfaces.
Earn user trust
- Test & iterate pods in real fleets; publish range, safety, and uptime data.
- Offer subscription plans with guaranteed car uptime; handle pack upkeep in the background.
- Partner with fleets & taxi operators; ensure pods meet their metrics (TCO & service).
5) Electric Vehicle and battery swapping
Pioneering microcars with attach‑and‑go power
Blinq Mobility’s Pods are purpose-built electric microcars engineered on a modular skateboard platform. Designed for maximum efficiency and safety, each Pod weighs about 60% of a conventional sedan yet integrates car-grade features such as airbags, seat belts, and a reinforced crash structure. The same skateboard platform, with its built-in crash structure, can support multiple body form factors, enabling flexibility in design and manufacturing. In the urban taxi segment, where vehicles operate for extended hours, electric powertrains offer significantly lower operating costs. When paired with Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS), Blinq’s vehicles can stay on the road longer, minimizing downtime associated with traditional charging.
6) Ground truth
From lab to street: scaling pods & swapping
Proof‑of‑concept first
- Deploy the first 50 pods in a taxi fleet; refine the swap station design and reliability.
- Partner with a fleet and provide a dedicated swap station near their depots.
- Gather BMS, motor, and mechanical data; fix early failures.
- Prove the unit economics and efficiency of cars and battery swapping.
Build the swap network
- Partner with Petrol station owners and parking spaces; convert them into battery swapping nodes.
- Create a franchise model where micro-entrepreneurs purchase station hardware and earn per swap.
- Ensure each station reports uptime and energy dispensed; treat them like public utilities.
Unit economics
- Vehicle without battery costs less than a CNG car; with battery subscription, total TCO is
≈ ₹2.5/km. - Swaps at ₹625 for 20 kWh; users save time & avoid replacement risk.
- Battery life cycle management remains with Blinq’s energy arm..
7) Founders’ corner
Lessons from a serial EV Entrepreneur
- Start with a simple question. Ask why something obvious isn’t happening; dig until you hit the design or business constraint.
- Prototype relentlessly. Leave your fancy degrees aside; build, test, and iterate. The market teaches more than spreadsheets.
- Take the complex piece out. Battery degradation is inevitable and often unpredictable; by making them rentals, you remove the fear and accelerate adoption.
- Uptime trumps features. A simple car that runs 100% of the time is worth more than a fancy car that sits in a workshop.
4 more founder tips
- Let market lead standardisation; avoid top‑down standards too early.
- Service design must be core to your hardware; design for maintenance and replacement.
- Educate customers about battery leasing and swappable use; change happens when they understand economics.
- Early paid pilots are a must. Real Validation: Free users will always tell you your product is great; paying users will hold you accountable for the slightest of nuances. That’s where real improvement happens.
8) Vision 2040
A city of pods, swappable modules & energy freedom
- Micro‑EV pods become the default urban taxi; traffic, parking and pollution problems drop.
- Energy companies own battery fleets and operate swap stations; pricing is transparent, much like prepaid electricity.
- Packs are modular; a single block suits a compact car, two blocks suit an SUV.
- Charging or swapping is as fast as buying petrol; 98% uptime corridors are common.
- Battery afterlife is built in: second‑life storage for buildings; recycling with high recovery; users never worry about replacement cost.