Chinese language automaker Geely—mother or father firm of Volvo, Polestar, and Lotus—has signed an settlement with Nio to make use of the latter’s battery-swapping tech within the Chinese language market.
Below the settlement, the 2 firms “co-develop two battery swapping requirements for personal vehicles and business automobiles,” promote adoption of the expertise, and scale up battery-swapping operations, in line with a Geely press launch.
The settlement additionally requires growth of a “unified battery swap operation,” together with interoperability between the battery-swapping {hardware} of each producers. A timeline for assembly these objectives was not given, nonetheless.
2024 Volvo EM90
Nio rolled out battery swapping in 2019 as a “killer app” for the manufacturers EVs that differentiated them amongst many different manufacturers—suggesting a completely charged battery in 3 minutes. The corporate claimed to have hit 1,000 battery-swapping stations final yr.
At the same time as charging networks have grown, Nio has continued pushing for growth of its battery-swapping community and typically boosting the tech—even will rolling out 500-kw DC quick chargers. These efforts have included a partnership with Shell to increase the tech in Europe in addition to additional increase the Chinese language community.
Nio continues to be bullish on the tech, and simply Thursday it reported that it has 30 swapping stations throughout 5 European markets, and over 2,200 swapping stations worldwide. Its stations deal with over 60,000 battery swaps per day.
2024 Polestar 3 prototype
Whereas Nio is probably the most prolific, different firms are selling their very own battery-swapping methods. Chinese language battery maker CATL rolled out its personal battery-swapping resolution in 2022, claiming one-minute swap occasions.
To this point the closest tech within the U.S. is that from California’s Ample, which has demonstrated its system with each passenger vehicles and supply vehicles. That’s, until you rely Tesla’s early efforts, which began with a lot fanfare however solely produced a single (now-closed) swapping station.