Odakyu Switches Back to CHARGESPOT, Expanding Phone Battery Rental to 70 Stations
- Odakyu is removing the JuuRen chargers and returning to the CHARGESPOT battery rental service.
- Coverage expands from five stations including Shinjuku to all 70 stations on the network.
- Odakyu first introduced CHARGESPOT at five stations in April 2019.
- It switched those same five stations to JuuRen in May 2021, making this a full circle.
For anyone moving around Tokyo, this is practical: Odakyu is switching its station power bank rental from JuuRen back to CHARGESPOT, and expanding from five stations including Shinjuku to all 70 on its network. A dead phone abroad is a real problem when navigation, translation, payment and tickets all live on it.
The path is worth noting. Odakyu introduced CHARGESPOT at five stations in April 2019, replaced it with JuuRen in May 2021, and has now come full circle at fourteen times the scale. Shared battery rental has cycled through several operators in Japan, and stations are the channel that works: heavy footfall, short dwell times and dense return points. That churn also says the business has little stickiness — coverage matters more than brand.
Practically, CHARGESPOT lets you borrow at one station and return at another, so along the Odakyu line, including the Hakone and Enoshima routes, return points are no longer a worry. Check the rate and the maximum rental period first; overtime charges usually hurt more than the rental itself.
The wider point is channel, not product. Japanese rail operators are steadily commercialising station space, from lockers to shared offices to battery rental.