If you haven't spent time in Vietnam recently, and particularly in a major city like Hanoi, then you might not realize just how popular motorcycles are there. Let me hit you with a couple of numbers to help; as of 2020, there were approximately 65 million registered motorcycles in active use in the country according to Statista. How does that number stack up with the population? That's around one bike for each of two-thirds of Vietnam's inhabitants.
Or, to put it another way, one motorcycle each for over half of the country's population. In other words, they're kind of a big deal, and that's a fact that's undeniable if and when you visit Hanoi. They are, quite simply, everywhere. In large part, that's why my colleague Robbie Bacon had such a difficult time taking the Hanoi city government's plan to ban combustion motorcycles from the city starting in July 2026 seriously.
It's late May 2026 at the time of writing, and Hanoi just significantly scaled down its proposed combustion motorcycle ban within the past day. Still, even though that's the case, there has been a marked push toward the adoption of more EV motorbikes on Hanoi's streets, because the air pollution is a real problem that impacts the lives of residents on a daily basis. Let's face it; no one wants to breathe bad air, or have their loved ones breathing it all the time, either.
With that in mind, Honda and LG Energy Solution just announced that they've jointly agreed to build out both Hanoi's EV motorbike battery swapping infrastructure, as well as bring more EV motorbikes to Hanoi in Q3 of 2026.
What kinds of numbers are we talking about? The planned demonstration project revealed by the two companies, together with the city of Hanoi's government, should include around 50 Honda MPP battery swapping stations installed throughout the city. Additionally, about 500 of Honda's EV motorbikes will be participating in the trial, though full information on who will be using them and how anyone can sign up has not yet been released.
Given the prevalence of small-displacement motorbikes on Vietnam's streets, this seems like an ideal use case for a pilot program like this. The EV motorbike lineup that Honda currently has in Japan that makes use of its MPP swappable batteries are all small-displacement delivery scooter analogs: the Gyro e:, Canopy e:, and Benly e:. Honda's already been working to bring this ecosystem to India, another place where many riders utilize small-displacement machines on a daily basis, and smog is similarly a serious, often complained-about problem in major metropolitan areas.
