Bingo E2 First Look: The Tiny EV You Buy and Never Drive

Owning an electric vehicle has plenty of upsides for business owners, a key one being lower maintenance and operating costs. The catch, of course, is charging, which keeps your vehicles off the road. DC fast chargers keep getting better and charge times have dropped from around 40 minutes to less than 30 in newer EVs, but what if you didn’t have to plug in an EV every time it needed to be recharged?

That is the pitch behind Bingo Technologies. Founded by a key executive behind Mophie, a company focused on mobile device power, Bingo is the latest EV maker to explore battery swapping as a way around charging downtime. Its answer is the E2 microcar, which pairs swappable batteries with a permanent rechargeable pack rather than replacing it entirely.

You can buy one, but you will not be driving it in the U.S. In fact, the whole point of the E2 is that you do not drive it at all, anywhere. The vehicle is designed to earn money for you while someone else uses it, though it is not autonomous.

The Bingo E2 is meant to be an investment in a ride-hailing vehicle for developing markets such as Kenya and South Africa. Buyers pay the full $12,000 MSRP including a refundable $99 deposit, and the car is then opened to a pool of licensed, insured, and Bingo-vetted ride-hailing operators who lease or rent vehicles for their ride-hailing businesses.

Why There’s a Need for Bingo and the E2

According to Bingo, the model makes sense for EV drivers in places like Nairobi, Kenya, where fuel and vehicle rental costs can crush profits. The company says the average driver may not break even despite working up to 14 hours a day.

It is not for lack of demand. Nairobi sees roughly 500,000 rides per day, according to Bingo. But soaring fuel prices have eaten even further into drivers’ earnings.

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The EV You Don’t Have to Charge if You Don’t Want To

Charging infrastructure in many of these countries is still developing, but Bingo drivers may not need to rely on DC fast charging or even AC charging very often. The E2’s party trick is its battery setup: a 31-kWh lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery mounted under the floor, plus four replaceable nickel cobalt manganese (NMC) battery modules under the rear seat that add another 13-kWh of capacity.

When those modules run low, drivers can swap them at a Bingo station for fresh ones. The process appears simple enough. The rear seat bottom flips forward, a small panel held by four bolts and two spring clips is raised, and the high-voltage cables are disconnected with twist locks from inside the vehicle.

Bingo says the swap takes just two minutes, which could keep drivers on the road longer and earning more for both themselves and the vehicle owner. If needed, or if a driver simply prefers to, the 31-kWh main battery can still be charged like any other EV. Bingo says it can go from 20 to 80 percent in about an hour on a DC fast charger.

The company also claims the LFP chemistry and battery design will allow the main pack to last up to 500,000 miles, enough to outlive the lease term offered to ride-hailing operators.

Who Is the Founder of Bingo Technologies?

A micromobility vehicle with swappable battery modules is not a new idea for Bingo Technologies founder and CEO Daniel Huang. Before this, Huang worked at Mophie, the phone charging and power bank company, and helped develop an e-scooter called the Immotor Go.

That was a three-wheeled scooter that folded up and used a pair of easily swappable battery modules. Now Huang wants to apply the same battery swapping logic to the Bingo E2, with the goal of improving economic conditions in developing countries while giving people in wealthier ones a way to earn passive income.

Will owning a ride-hailing car in a country half a world away prove successful, or even be a wise investment? That is harder to say. But battery swapping has already proven itself as a viable alternative to conventional EV charging and its built-in wait times.

Nio has used the strategy successfully in China and has also seen traction in parts of Europe. It can also make sense in places where installing DC fast chargers is difficult or impossible. Bingo seems to be on the right track when it comes to expanding EV access in developing markets, as long as people are comfortable leasing a vehicle they will never see.