Immotor staff charge ahead to help deliveries of vital goods, supplies

Battery cabinets for electric bicycles are playing a key role in the pandemic because they help deliverymen, insiders say.

Xiao Yikun, 22, experienced this when he worked for a community in Jiang'an district, Wuhan, in March. Deliverymen would take spent batteries out of their electric bicycles and give them to Xiao, who would replace them with ones charged in the cabinet.

There are six such cabinets in this community, together holding 72 batteries. As staff members of green energy mobility company Shenzhen Immotor, Xiao and his colleague Wei Xiaotai have served more than 200 deliverymen and residents in the community since Jan 31.

To prevent the virus spreading, Beijing announced strict entrance and exit rules for housing estates on Feb 9. It meant deliverymen could not enter the estates where the battery cabinets were.

Immotor said it quickly launched solutions and arranged staff members to speak with property management companies about how to guarantee battery replacement.

Since public transport was disrupted at that time in Beijing, Zhang Jun, from Immotor, said he and his colleagues went to meetings on foot and bicycle despite the cold weather.

Since the beginning of March, the pandemic control situation has improved. But Zhang said he and his colleagues have not relaxed their duties. They have patrolled and disinfected battery cabinets and continue to visit property management companies to discuss how to enact change. They travel about 100 kilometers every day.

In recent years, many delivery sites in Shanghai have used self-service battery-stored equipment and deliverymen no longer charge their electric bicycles. With a surge in demand of fresh food delivery during the COVID-19 outbreak, deliverymen were using their electric bicycles more frequently.

As a result, 100.me, which sells fresh food online, asked Immotor to upgrade their battery-exchange station system equipment. Three staff members from the Shanghai branch swooped into action, changing all the instruments at five sites over seven days. They also upgraded nearly 100 electric vehicles. However, because the deliverymen were using the vehicles during the day, the trio needed to work at night and even till dawn.

One of them, surnamed Zhao, said they felt they were fighting a battle those days but they felt they had to do it. It was essential to supply the bicycles with energy so deliverymen could send food more efficiently, which benefited many residents, Zhao said.

The trio had another problem during the pandemic because people were prevented from entering warehouses containing materials used in battery cabinets. As a result, they had to go to warehouses after 12 pm.

Shenzhen Immotor is one of the leading companies engaged in network layout of green energy for electric bicycles, the company's executives said. Shenzhen Immotor launched the brand and an online platform involving lithium batteries, smart battery-exchange stations, a green energy mobility network management system, and big data system in December 2017.

The brand supports the sustainable development of energy and promotes the replacement of bicycles' lead-acid cells with lithium batteries. It wants to improve the environment by increasing the recycling of lithium energy.

It also uses technologies related to the internet of things and energy management to alleviate problems caused by lead-acid cells, such as pollution and inefficiency.

songmengxing@chinadaily.com.cn