CATL, the world’s leading manufacturer of EV batteries, is set to launch its battery swapping technology in Europe, a company executive told the media outlet FT on Thursday.
Battery swapping systems offer “huge potential,” according to Vice President and Board Secretary Jiang Li, as they reduce the initial cost of purchasing an EV by allowing drivers to use, but not own, the battery.
Li told the media outlet that CATL plans to establish 1,000 battery-swap stations in its home market by the end of the year, with a goal of reaching 10,000 stations over the next three years.
“Then we can copy the business model in Europe and other regions,” Li stated.
The executive added that CATL is “facing some difficulties in geopolitics, but we are still open to co-operating, especially in research and development,” saying that the company doesn’t want to “make money with only one company. We want to share.”
Li noted that the company has already engaged in discussions about battery swapping technology with multiple automakers across Europe.
The battery giant is currently one of the EV battery suppliers from Ford, Tesla, and many other carmakers. Last year, it entered a joint venture with Stellantis to build a €4.1 billion ($4.8 billion) lithium battery factory in Spain.
Earlier this month, Stellantis announced that it is launching its Free2move car-sharing service in Madrid, with a fleet of 100 swappable Fiat 500e vehicles.
The group partnered with Ample, a San Francisco-based company providing battery swapping technology, back in 2023.
Back in 2013, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk promised to reveal a battery swapping system which would come on top of the charging option for the Model S.
“We designed Model S from the beginning to be capable of swapping out the battery pack faster than you can fill a gas tank,” Musk said in June 2013.
However, the first company investing in large scale was the Shanghai-based EV maker Nio. The company opened its first station in 2018 in Shenzhen, where BYD is headquartered.
The first Nio battery swap station in Europe opened four years ago in Norway, ahead of the brand’s expansion to the country, which took place later that year.
Nio currently operates about 60 stations in Europe, the majority of them located in Germany and Norway. The company is also present in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, and recently announced expansion to ten more markets.
In late April, EV exclusively reported that Nio Power’s team in Europe was significantly downsized to only five active employees.
This, together with recent investment cuts, weighs on the rollout of its battery swap and infrastructure network in the continent.
In its home market, and as of the time of writing, Nio currently operates over 3,370 battery swap stations equipped with 26,630 charging piles.
Nio and CATL have further deepened their strategic partnership on battery swapping in mid-March.
The two companies announced they are pursuing “capital cooperation,” as CATL is “advancing an investment capped at 2.5 billion yuan (nearly $345 million) in Nio Power.”
In late May, Nio added battery manufacturing and related services to its corporate activities.
By the end of the month, ‘Weilan,’ the firm backed by both brands for battery development, tripled its registered capital.
