South Africa Battery Swapping Case Study: TYCORUN & MOTAWILL

Background

For delivery riders in Johannesburg and Cape Town, daily earnings are won or lost on the road. Fuel costs eat into what a rider takes home, and a vehicle that is off the road earns nothing. Going electric helps with fuel, but for a working rider, waiting hours for a battery to charge can take too much time off the streets.

To remove that wait, MOTAWILL introduced a turnkey battery swapping model. Instead of waiting on a plug, a rider pulls up to a swap cabinet, exchanges a depleted battery for a charged one in about a minute, and gets back to deliveries. MOTAWILL manages the swap network and fleet operations for delivery platforms including Zulzi. TYCORUN provides the end-to-end system behind it, including the delivery motorcycles, swap batteries, swap cabinets and cloud management software, and supports the rollout.

The challenges

Running a battery swapping network at fleet scale in South Africa comes with four clear requirements.

• Short stops. Riders earn per delivery, so every minute off the road counts. A swap has to feel like a quick stop, not a charging session.
• Power cuts. Load shedding is part of daily life, and the network cannot go dark every time the grid does. Cabinets need a way to keep serving riders when power is out.
• Battery security. Batteries are valuable assets spread across public locations. Operators need to know where each battery is and be able to lock it remotely.
• Fast growth. The fleet is moving from hundreds of vehicles to thousands within a year, across more than one city. The system has to scale without being redesigned each time.

The TYCORUN solution

Instead of combining parts from several suppliers, MOTAWILL uses one complete system from TYCORUN, so the vehicles, batteries, cabinets and software are designed to work together.

• E67 dual-battery electric motorcycles, built for daily last-mile delivery.
  
• Semi-solid-state swap batteries in the current configuration, designed for repeated swapping.
  
• 12-slot swap cabinets that store and charge batteries, so riders can swap on demand.
  
• Cloud platform and app with GPS positioning, real-time battery data and a battery anti-theft lock, giving operators one view of the whole network.
  
• Installation, training and after-sales support, backed by TYCORUN engineers, to help the team get each new site running.

Hardware and energy configurations are fully modular. TYCORUN tailors vehicle specs and battery chemistry to each market’s operational demands, allowing MOTAWILL to dynamically adapt fleet configurations as deployment scales.

How a swap works

1. Fast Swap on the Route: The rider inserts the depleted battery into an open compartment and releases a fully charged pack within a minute.
2. Intelligent Charging Cycle: The 12-slot cabinet automatically initiates temperature-managed, off-peak/load-balanced charging for returned packs.
3. Real-Time Network Sync: The cloud platform updates battery state of charge (SoC), location, and health metrics instantly across the operator dashboard.

Built for local conditions

Strategic cabinet placement across high-traffic routes

Cabinets are placed outside shops, in parking lots, at shopping malls and on managed properties. Swapping happens along routes riders already use, so a rider does not need to make a long detour for energy. For MOTAWILL, this means coverage can grow site by site without building full stations.

Battery swap cabinets that keep running during load shedding

When the grid goes down, the batteries in the first three slots supply power to the cabinet so it can keep operating. Riders can still take charged batteries out and return depleted ones. The returned batteries are not charged during the outage, because the reserve power is used only to run the cabinet. Swapping continues as long as charged batteries remain, and charging resumes when the grid returns.

Battery tracking and anti-theft

Every battery can be located by GPS and locked remotely. Operators see battery status in real time and manage the fleet from one platform, which matters when assets are spread across many public cabinets.

Results

• 500 E67 motorcycles in operation across Johannesburg and Cape Town.
• 500+ more motorcycles shipped in October 2026, taking the project past 1,000 vehicles delivered to the market.
• About one minute per swap in normal operation, which keeps stops short for riders who earn per delivery.
• 2,000 vehicles targeted by the end of 2026.
• Lower operating costs. Delivery fleets on MOTAWILL’s network achieve an estimated 40% reduction in daily running expenses compared to conventional petrol bikes, driven by fuel savings and zero charging downtime.

"Running an electric fleet in South Africa means planning for power cuts and for a lot of swaps every day. TYCORUN gave us the vehicles, batteries, cabinets and software as one system, and the cabinets keep working when the grid does not. That is what let us start with hundreds of motorcycles and plan for thousands."

Planning for 1,000 vehicles

Using the ratios seen in the early operation, a fleet of about 1,000 vehicles is typically planned around:

• 2,000+ swaps per day
• 2,800+ batteries in circulation
• 80+ swap cabinets

Dual-battery setups require a higher battery-to-vehicle ratio to keep packs cycling seamlessly between active routes and cabinet charging. While final counts adjust based on route density and cabinet placement, these planning benchmarks ensure steady asset availability across a 1,000-vehicle fleet.

What this means for operators

MOTAWILL’s South Africa rollout proves that battery swapping can solve the hardest operational bottlenecks in commercial delivery—eliminating charging downtime, overcoming grid instability, and securing mobile assets at scale. Whether deploying a new electric fleet or expanding swapping infrastructure, TYCORUN delivers the fully customizable hardware, IoT ecosystem, and local engineering support to bring your project to market.