The Electric: China's Biggest Battery Maker Is Quickly Expanding Its Rental Business
As they attempt to lower the cost of their electric vehicles, major Western automakers have mostly struggled with a single component: the battery, which can be up to 40% of an EV’s cost.
One answer has arisen repeatedly—the swappable battery. That is, a consumer could buy the EV without a battery and simply rent one to swap into the vehicle at a commercial location. But the idea hasn’t taken off, partly because automakers have been reluctant to commit to installing swapping equipment on the underside of their EVs, and partly because it would be expensive to position thousands of batteries at swapping stations in big and small cities. Instead, automakers make batteries a permanent component of an EV, increasingly embedded in the chassis.
Battery swapping, however, is starting to take off in China, driven not by its automakers but by its largest battery manufacturer. Over the last year, Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. has installed some 1,400 swapping stations in 99 Chinese cities, with plans to expand to 4,000 in about 190 cities by the end of 2026. CATL charges $83 for a monthly subscription allowing unlimited swapping, and roughly $20 for one-time-only swaps.
While most of China’s high-profile EV makers are sticking with permanent batteries, at least for now, CATL said it has struck agreements with 11 largely state-owned automakers to adapt some of their EVs for its Choco-Swap battery system. In all, it said those carmakers were offering 25 swappable EV models. In addition, CATL has struck deals with 10 Chinese cargo truck manufacturers that will use its swapping system.
The emergence of battery swapping in China illustrates another facet of its aggressive, all-of-the-above approach to getting consumers into EVs. Much of the effort relies on a massive 50% expansion of charging stations over the last year.
Swapping is another approach. One advantage is that the price of an EV without a battery is generally thousands of dollars less than that of a traditional EV because you don’t pay for the battery. You can swap out a nearly empty battery for a fully charged one in just a few minutes.
I tried out the swapping process at a small CATL station in the city of Ningde, on China’s east coast.
Upgrade to ask Deep Research to…
I drove up to the station entrance in a compact Changan Oshan 520 sedan provided by CATL. At the barrier arm, you use an app on a screen to indicate how many 75-mile battery blocks you want—you can fit up to three at a time. I could see on the screen that the system recognized me and my car. The arm rose, and I drove in just as I would at a car wash. Once centered in the station, I stopped the car and put it in neutral.
You could feel a mechanism engaging underneath the car. The vehicle then rose just a bit. On the app, I could follow the progress—in green, I could see the removal of the battery; then in blue, the installation of the new one. All that happened in about a minute and a half. I drove out with a fully charged battery. That’s a lot faster than even the fastest fast-charging station.
China’s main maker of battery-swapping EVs is Nio, whose sales grew 71% year on year in the first four months of the year. It aims to sell at least 450,000 cars this year, a 40% increase over 2025. Cumulatively, it has sold 1.1 million EVs and has roughly 3,800 swapping stations across China.
Last year, CATL and Nio said they would coordinate their build-out of swapping stations. The two companies are targeting somewhat different demographic groups. Nio is generally going after affluent buyers: It has priced most of its models above $50,000, though its Onvo line sells for under $30,000, and $21,000 without the battery.
A CATL representative said the company is aiming at buyers looking for cheaper cars. For instance, the compact electric Changan Eado sedan, which comes with a CATL battery that is not swappable, costs $18,300. The Oshan I drove costs roughly $13,500 without the battery, or 26% less.
At $83 a month for unlimited charging, the battery-swapping car would be a better deal for nearly five years. If you add in interest payments from a typical car loan, the cheaper battery-swapping EV would be an even better deal, since the owners likely would have borrowed less.
The CATL stations aren’t only for swapping but also for ultrafast charging if a consumer is driving a traditional EV or plug-in hybrid. CATL says the stations can charge some of its batteries from 10% to 98% of capacity in just six and a half minutes without damaging the battery.
EV battery swapping has been tried outside China but has failed there. In the U.S., California swapping startup Ample filed for bankruptcy in December after raising more than $330 million. In the mid-2010s, Tesla opened a single swapping station on a pilot basis but quietly closed it in 2016. Israeli swapping startup Better Place went bankrupt in 2013 after burning through $850 million in funding.
In Europe, Nio has roughly 60 swapping stations, mostly in Germany and Norway, nowhere near enough to persuade large numbers of Europeans to buy the cars. Last year, CATL said it would build a battery-swapping network in Europe as well, but it hasn’t deployed any stations as of yet.
It could be that someone will have another go at swapping in the U.S. Cutting an EV’s price by a quarter makes that an attractive option. So far, though, we have heard of no one taking the plunge.