Nio and Geely will run two independent battery swap networks once their deal closes, one for private cars and one for commercial vehicles, built on Geely’s Yiyi, to serve Cao Cao Mobility and future robotaxis, Nio Inc.’s founder and Chief Executive Officer William Li said on Monday.
Both networks will sit inside Nio Power, the swapping and charging unit in which Geely Holding will take 30% under the deal announced on Monday, in exchange for Yiyi and 640 million yuan ($95.3 million) in cash.
“After our transaction closes, we will operate two independent swap networks, one for consumers and one for commercial users,” Li said at the signing in Hangzhou.
“The commercial side is based on Yiyi, including Cao Cao Mobility, which Mr. An just mentioned, and future robotaxis,” he said, referring to Geely Holding Chief Executive Officer An Conghui.
An said Cao Cao would switch fully to battery swapping, as would the robotaxi model it is developing, which he said “will soon arrive.”
Nio’s battery swap stations have until now served only cars from its own brands, and none of its carmaker partners had launched a compatible model.
Under the agreement announced on Monday, Nio will keep 63.6%, and the deal values Nio Power at about 16 billion yuan ($2.4 billion).
Yiyi’s commercial swap business “will be integrated into NIO Power,” which will “continue to optimize its battery swapping network for commercial fleets,” Nio said in its English version of the joint statement.
The deal still needs regulatory clearance. Nio’s US-listed shares were trading 2.22% higher at $3.66 during Monday’s pre-market trading session.
The Fleet
Cao Cao had more than 38,000 purpose-built ride-hailing cars in 31 cities at the end of 2025, as of August 27.
Its fleet is supported by 448 swap stations offering 60-second battery swaps, according to the same report, which did not give a date for that figure.
Cao Cao had 140 second-generation robotaxis on the road at the end of June and targets 100,000 robotaxis deployed by 2030, according to its first-half results.
Its custom vehicles cost about 36.4% less to own than a typical fully electric car. Cao Cao’s robotaxi, the Eva Cab, was shown in April and is due for mass production in 2027.
Nio Power had 4,126 swap stations for private cars on Monday afternoon, according to its live network map.
Separate but Integrated
“There is still some integration work the two sides need to do, in research and development, supply chains, manufacturing and operations,” Li said, according to Kuai Keji. “How to run two networks at the same time and do it efficiently, that is the first thing.”
“The commercial swap network will also be laid out scientifically and run efficiently according to the needs of our partner, Geely’s Cao Cao Mobility and robotaxis,” he said.
“You can imagine that in future some sites could share power facilities, with electricity going to consumer swap stations, to the commercial swap network and to Geely’s AI charging, so construction becomes much more efficient,” Li said.
Nio President Qin Lihong said fleet operators were “a very good scenario” for scaling swapping quickly.
A ride-hailing car on a good swap network can save up to 90 minutes a day, which could lift its operating income by 15% to 20%, Qin said.
“So imagine: once the Geely and Nio swap networks are fully merged and Nio Power also serves commercial vehicles, we will see a station within five minutes’ drive, operating income up 15% to 20% and operating costs down by as much as 40%,” he said.
Geely said Yiyi is expanding into what it calls green intelligent transit islands, automatic swapping for robotaxis and transport-energy links, according to the Chinese joint statement.
Private Cars Come Later
The consumer side of the deal has no timetable.
The two sides will co-develop unified swapping technology and standards for consumer models, and Geely Holding “will develop consumer-facing battery-swappable vehicle models,” Nio said on Monday.
Nio’s statement on Sunday, which set out the financial terms, called the same step “preliminary plans” whose “finalization and implementation” were “subject to further discussions between the relevant parties.”
Neither statement named a Geely model or a launch date.
“We will also build out the network more actively. Not only will consumer swap stations be built faster, we will also make sure we are ready for and serve Geely’s future consumer swap models,” Li said, according to Kuai Keji.
10,000 Stations
Li said the two sides’ target is to build and operate 10,000 swap stations by 2030. The joint statement gives the same figure as Nio Power’s own plan, which Nio had set before the deal.
The companies have not said whether the target includes Yiyi’s commercial stations.
At 10,000 stations, the swap network’s power demand would exceed 10 billion kWh a year, according to the joint statement.
“If we look at it from the angle of 10 billion kWh of power use and build distributed storage, you can imagine that 10,000 swap stations are basically equivalent to 20 GWh of storage capacity,” Li said.
Nio’s power trading volume was 2 billion kWh last year and 3 billion kWh this year, and would rise further with Geely, he said.
“Now the state is also pushing a new power market mechanism, and we will take part actively,” Li said.
