The world’s largest EV maker BYD unveiled this week a battery charging system capable of refilling a pack from 10% to 97% in nine minutes at its major technology event held on March 5.
The company’s latest posing the most direct competitive challenge to date against Nio and CATL’s battery-swap ambitions and comes as the Shenzhen-based automaker seeks to revive demand in the domestic market.
Nio, the first company to establish a large-scale battery swapping network, has invested more than 18 billion yuan — equivalent to $2.61 billion.
Chinese business outlet 36kr, one of the country’s most widely read technology and industry publications, was among the first to identify Nio as the primary target, describing the announcement as placing “BYD‘s blade is now at Nio‘s throat.”
9 Minutes Against 3
BYD‘s second-generation Blade Battery and FLASH Charging system — revealed this week by the chief executive Wang Chuanfu — charge from 10% to 70% in five minutes and 10% to 97% in nine minutes.
At -30°C — the temperature range that has historically made northern China the most compelling use case for battery swapping — the system charges from 20% to 97% in 12 minutes, three minutes longer than at room temperature.
The Blade Battery 2.0 uses lithium iron phosphate chemistry with energy density more than 5% higher than its predecessor, reaching up to 210 Wh/kg, with a designed service life exceeding one million kilometres.
BYD had 4,239 FLASH Charging stations commissioned as of March 5 and is targeting 20,000 by the end of 2026.
Of those, 18,000 will be embedded inside existing third-party fast-charging sites under a “station-within-a-station” model, with grid-scale batteries buffering load spikes to enable rapid deployment without new grid connections.
A further 2,000 locations will be positioned on the highway network, placing a FLASH Charging point within every 100 kilometres of motorway.
Nio has 3,753 swap stations accumulated over eight years.
BYD is targeting more than five times that number of ultra-fast charging locations within a single calendar year.
The Infrastructure Nio Built
Nio opened the world’s first battery swap station in Shenzhen in June 2018, when public fast-charging infrastructure was sparse and peak output rarely exceeded 60 kilowatts.
At that charge rate, a full battery required more than an hour.
Founder William Li’s solution — an automated exchange of the entire battery pack completed in approximately three minutes — offered a refuelling-equivalent experience that no charging technology could match at the time.
As of publication time, Nio‘s live network data show 3,753 swap stations in operation, 103,967,099 cumulative battery swaps, 28,283 Nio-owned charging piles and access to 1,570,671 third-party charging points.
The swap network alone represents a cumulative investment exceeding 18 billion yuan, equivalent to $2.61 billion.
The average fully-equipped station cost, including the battery inventory held on-site, runs to nearly five million yuan each ($724,000) — according to 36kr.
During the 2026 Chinese New Year holiday, the network processed more than 2.07 million swaps, a 29% increase over the prior year’s holiday daily average, as Nio‘s customer base grew by more than 300,000 vehicles.
Tesla x Battery Swap
In June 2013, Elon Musk had demonstrated a battery swap system on the Model S at Tesla‘s design studio in Los Angeles, completing the exchange in approximately 90 seconds and declaring it faster than filling a petrol tank.
Tesla opened a single pilot station at Harris Ranch, California, in March 2015, accessible only by appointment to invited Model S owners.
It closed before the end of 2016. At Tesla’s 2015 annual shareholder meeting, Musk concluded that “people don’t care about pack swap” and that Supercharging was sufficient.
150kWh Battery
Nio‘s own product record anticipated one dimension of the challenge it now faces.
In April 2024, after three years of delays, Nio began mass producing a 150-kilowatt-hour semi-solid-state battery pack, its highest-energy cell, capable of a CLTC range exceeding 1,000 kilometres — as proven by Li in a livestreamed roadtrip.
As EV reported in November 2025, production halted after several hundred units.
William Li attributed the outcome not to cost or quality, but to a lack of customer demand generated by the swap network itself.
“We deployed the battery packs providing our users the option to flexibly upgrade to the 150kWh — we found that actually they are not using this pack as often as we expected,” Li said.
He noted that as Nio expanded its swap infrastructure, customers gravitated toward smaller, cheaper battery options.
In Nio‘s early years, he said, the split between the 75-kilowatt-hour and 100-kilowatt-hour packs was roughly even.
By late 2025, with more than 3,500 swap stations operating, 97% of customers chose the 75-kilowatt-hour pack.
Li described the 150-kilowatt-hour battery as having served “more of a marketing purpose than the real need,” and ruled out its introduction to European markets entirely.
8 Partners, Zero Models
Nio has sought to address the swap network’s scale problem by recruiting other automakers to adopt its technology.
Since November 2023, when Changan Automobile became the first signatory, Nio has reached battery-swap alliance agreements with eight automakers, including Geely, Chery, JAC, Lotus, GAC and FAW Group.
The agreements were presented as a foundation for industry-wide battery standardisation that would multiply the fleet of swap-compatible vehicles and distribute infrastructure costs across a broader base.
As EV reported last December, more than two years after the first agreement, no mass-produced battery-swappable vehicle from any alliance partner has reached the market.
At a GAC media event in Guangzhou in January 2025, the company’s Director of Battery System Integration said GAC had completed technical alignments with Nio‘s system but was still awaiting internal approval for model development.
The other partners have not provided public timelines as Nio prepares to unveil its fifth generation battery swap stations.
Nio also fell materially short of its 2025 station construction targets. William Li set a goal of building 2,000 new swap stations during the year.
The company installed fewer than 650 new sites.
The founder and CEO acknowledged in September that Nio would miss the 2025 target as it reallocated resources toward the development of fifth-generation stations.
As EV reported in December 2025, Li confirmed pioneer fifth-generation stations would begin deploying in Q1 2026, with mass rollout starting from Q2.
“Starting from Q2 next year, all the battery-swap stations we deploy will be fifth-generation stations,” Li said.
The new hardware will be compatible with all three Nio group brands — Nio, Onvo and Firefly — as well as future alliance partners.
Co-founder and President Lihong Qin described the fifth-generation station as the “ultimate goal” of Nio‘s battery swap strategy.
Nio‘s current fourth-generation stations complete a swap in under three minutes, use LiDAR for vehicle positioning, hold up to 23 battery packs and can handle up to 480 swaps per day.
The Rival CATL
While Nio‘s alliance has yet to produce a vehicle, a competing battery-swap standard operated by Nio‘s own primary battery supplier has been expanding rapidly.
CATL‘s Choco-SEB format, a modular battery-swap architecture designed for adoption across multiple automakers, had 1,020 stations deployed across 45 Chinese cities by the end of 2025, built within a single year.
The world’s largest EV battery maker subsequently raised its 2026 station construction target to more than 3,000, up from a prior goal of 2,500.
This week, two additional automakers announced Choco-SEB models.
GAC‘s brand Aion said it would officially launch a battery-swap version of the Aion RT sedan in April, with prices starting at 99,800 yuan and a claimed 99-second swap time.
Arcfox, a subsidiary of BAIC, announced a swap-compatible version of a new-generation family sedan would debut shortly, also connecting to the Choco network with the same 99-second claim.
CATL and GAC Group signed a 10-year strategic cooperation agreement in November 2025. CATL and BAIC have been in a collaboration covering skateboard chassis and battery swap models since June 2024.
The Break-Even Gap
With 3,753 stations and a daily average of 105,000 swaps, the mean utilisation per station runs to approximately 28 battery exchanges per day.
Nio has committed to building 1,000 additional swap stations in 2026, taking the total above 4,700 by year-end.
Solid-State Battery Programme
Nio registered a new wholly-owned subsidiary, Nio Battery Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, with registered capital of 100 million yuan, and signed a cooperation agreement with the Jiading district government in Shanghai to establish a dedicated battery R&D base.
As EV reported earlier in the week, the facility will focus on solid-state battery technologies, which Nio expects to deploy at scale after 2027.
The company is exploring oxide- and sulfide-based electrolyte routes in collaboration with external battery manufacturers and research institutions.
Nio‘s semi-solid-state battery programme, developed with WeLion New Energy — which is preparing for a pre-IPO tutoring process — was halted after a few hundred units due to insufficient customer demand, as EV reported.
WeLion is among the suppliers for which China’s government has provided solid-state battery R&D support.
CATL’s Dual Position
CATL signed a five-year cooperation agreement with Nio in January covering technology, ecosystem and market development, and simultaneously took over supply of 100-kilowatt-hour battery packs for the core Nio brand previously shared with CALB.
CATL has also made a 2.5 billion yuan strategic investment in Nio Power last year, the division that operates the swap and charging network.
The battery maker is itself targeting small-batch solid-state production in 2027 and supplies cells to dozens of other automakers, including those competing directly with Nio.
