National platform · ENTEC × GridWhiz · 2022–2023 · Shipped
One battery standard for every Thai motorcycle.
BATT SWAP is Thailand's national swappable-battery platform — the PumpCharge rider app, the station touchscreen firmware, and the program website, designed as a single session.
the problem
Every kerb, a different cabinet.
Every provider ran its own pack, its own plug, its own app — so every rider was locked to one network. No shared standard meant no interoperability, and no way for swapping to scale past a pilot.
Watched first-timers at live stations.
The standard came from ENTEC; the prototype station from GridWhiz. What the screens had to say came from standing behind first-time riders and watching where they stalled.
Touchscreen confusion at the station fed straight back into the firmware flow.
A swap isn't one screen — it's a phone, a touchscreen and a numbered slot, in one motion.
State had to carry across all three. Design the session first, the screens after.
how I think — the process was a loop
Design the flow
Draw the session — phone, touchscreen, slot — as one state machine.
Put it at a live station
Not a lab: the real touchscreen, on a real forecourt, in real sun.
Watch a first-timer
No coaching. Where their hands hesitate is where the design is wrong.
Feed the stumble back
Every hesitation went straight back into the firmware flow.
What the loop changed is visible on the shipped screens: one action per screen, type readable from a step back, the slot numbers lit, and the 30-second window named in red.
the design call
Design the session, not the screens.
App, firmware and web were drawn as one continuous session driven by a single state machine — with oversized type for sun and gloves, and the 30-second window made hard and unmissable.
“One standard, one flow.”
one state machine, three screens
The session state lives in one place. Whatever the phone promises, the station screen shows, and the slot honours — a rider never sees two surfaces disagree.
One session, frame by frame.
the shipped UI, in swap orderPumpCharge home — pack level, then Book Now
Tell it how many packs to swap
At the station — scan the QR or tap RFID
Return the low pack to the lit slot
Take the fresh packs — a hard 30-second window
Payment confirmed, back on the phone
the proof
Same moment, both screens.
Mid-swap, the phone and the station describe the same packs and the same slot — one state, rendered twice. That agreement is the whole trick.
Built for forecourts, not showrooms.
Readable in direct sun
Oversized type on the station touchscreen, built to be read at a forecourt in Thai daylight, gloves on.
Thai and English, in parallel
Every station screen carries both languages side by side — a national standard can't pick a reader.
A hard, unmissable window
The 30-second door window is named on screen, in red, with the slot numbers lit — no guessing under pressure.
what shipped
Out in the field, on stage at Techsauce.
Stations shipped to real forecourts, and the platform was shown at Techsauce Global Summit — covered in the press as Thai-made tech breaking the battery wall.
the program website — the public record
What the session taught me.
What I learned
Designing the shared session before the individual screens kept every surface honest to the others.
If I started over
Lock the cross-surface state model on day one — everything else hangs off it.
What I'm proud of
A first-time rider can finish inside the 30-second window without reading a manual.
✎ drafted from the project — mine to confirm