When I visited China last month to cover the Shanghai Auto Show, trying an electric-vehicle battery-swap station was high on my to-do list. The promise is certainly enticing: the ability to switch a depleted battery with a completely full one in a fraction of the time it’d take to fast-charge an EV.
After experiencing Nio’s approach to this, I drove away impressed. You park in one of their little car wash-like stations, and in about four minutes or less, you leave with a new battery and plenty of electric range. And Nio’s newest cars are capable of doing it in a little over two minutes.
It turns out that’s just the start. Now, battery giant CATL is working with a group of Chinese automakers on battery swapping that takes just 100 seconds—a little over a minute-and-a-half. And the first cars with that capability are already on the road.
Car News China and other outlets report that the first 1,000 EV sedans with CATL’s “Choco-SEB” swappable battery—named for its unusual chocolate bar-like design—have been delivered to a taxi company. The car that uses this system is pretty humble: a Changan Oshan 250 that costs around $23,000 and has a 56 kilowatt-hour battery.
Photo by: CATL
But that battery would be a godsend to any taxi driver. It can be swapped into the car at a designated station in just 100 seconds, which is still quicker than even China’s most cutting-edge EV fast-charging. The cars can still be plugged in like any EV, but this capability should drastically reduce parked time for cabs. For those drivers, as well as ride-hail drivers, any time spent not driving is lost money.
“They will jointly create a safe, reliable, efficient, economical, green and low-carbon new energy vehicle battery swapping ecosystem, which will provide users with a higher quality energy replenishment experience and pure electric travel services,” CATL officials said in a statement announcing the project last year.
Car News China said that CATL has already established 34 battery-swap stations in the launch city of Chongqing, and that each station can store up to 30 batteries. The company aims to have 1,000 such stations across China by the end of this year.
Photo by: Changan
As InsideEVs has extensively reported, China continues to lead the way in EV and battery technology, while countering the usual barriers to electric adoption like long wait times for charging and range anxiety. Several automakers are now working to meet or beat BYD’s five-minute EV fast-charging, and others have agreed to license Nio’s battery-swap tech as well.
In fact, CATL and Nio are getting tighter as well. Besides making use of Nio’s technology, CATL is reportedly looking to purchase a controlling stake in Nio Power’s battery swapping unit. And since CATL is already the world’s largest manufacturer of EV batteries, that could give this technology an unprecedented degree of scale.
While battery-swapping is basically nonexistent in the United States, it’s becoming an increasingly popular option in China—provided, of course, that the EV is built to do so. But it’s particularly appealing for people who work as taxi and ride-share drivers, as well as anyone without easy access to fast-charging. Nio is also deploying battery-swap stations in Europe, although the rollout has slowed considerably as the brand’s sales have failed to take off as projected.
Nonetheless, this concept continues to be an extremely promising—and convenient—alternative to charging as the EV space grows. With any luck, we’ll all see more of it everywhere, and soon.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
