On July 8th, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) held a symposium on the “Battery Swapping Mode”. The aim of the symposium was to listen to policy suggestions from local government departments, industry organizations, and relevant companies in the entire automotive industry chain on promoting the development of battery swapping mode, and to discuss the main problems and difficulties in the promotion and application of the battery swapping mode.
Participating vehicle companies: BAIC, NIO, Geely, GAC, Dongfeng, and Changan.
Participating auto parts companies: CATL, Hangzhou Boton, and Auton.
Since the battery swapping mode was mentioned in the government’s work report during the “Two Sessions”, the country has been increasing its efforts in promoting battery swapping mode. As a form of energy supplementation in pure electric vehicles, if you have experienced NIO’s battery swapping technology, you will know that when there are multiple battery swapping stations and no queues, it can provide the same experience as refueling.
The problems of queues and site arrangements will be relatively simple to solve after the national promotion, so queues and site arrangements are only temporary problems, just like the initial shortage of gas stations during its construction.
Battery swapping itself is an efficient energy supplementation system, but the battery swapping mode still faces problems:
The issue of “Battery Swapping Standards” standardization
Currently, only NIO has complete experience in private car battery swapping mode, but the question is whether other vehicle companies are willing to use NIO’s standard system and what kind of agreement they will use after they have connected.
Who Owns the Operating Rights of Battery Swapping Stations?
Battery swapping itself is a big business, and who will operate battery swapping is very important. Will each vehicle company build its own station or will they build their own and then have battery swapping compatibility with each other? There were rumors that NIO planned to operate NIO Power independently.
If battery swapping stations cannot allow any type or brand of car to use them like gas stations, then the cost of operating battery swapping will increase.
How to unify the batteries used by countless vehicle models
In order to build battery swapping stations, batteries must be provided within the station. How to unify the battery pack used by all vehicle models in the market is a big challenge. Currently, except for NIO, the battery packs for each model of other vehicle enterprises cannot be shared (even the same battery pack might require minor adjustments for different car models).
We are eagerly waiting to see what kind of sparks will be generated during the symposium by the five automakers.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.