Chongqing Changan Automobile and Nio (NYSE: NIO) have collaborated on battery swap network sharing, making the latter the company’s renowned energy replenishment network’s first external partner.
Nio today announced the signing of a battery exchange business cooperation agreement with Changan in Chongqing.
According to Nio, the two will collaborate to create swappable battery standards, construct and share the battery switch network, manufacture swappable cars, and establish an efficient battery asset management system.
This is Nio’s renewed partnership with the traditional automotive behemoth, following its withdrawal from a joint venture formed with Changan a few years ago.
“As Nio started battery swap from the very beginning, it has been ready to open up its technologies and infrastructure to the entire industry,” said William Li, founder, chairman, and CEO of Nio, according to an English-language press release.
“Similar to the cloud service provided by Internet companies, Nio’s Power Swap network and Power Cloud also followed the path along which we started with developing infrastructure and achieving a closed loop internally, and then open to others after validating the service across various scenarios,” Li added.
Nio has amassed considerable expertise in creating building, and operating battery swap stations after five years of development and is ready to open up to the whole industry, according to Li.
“As a leading automotive company in China, Changan Automobile has demonstrated great determination and strong execution in electrification and transformation. With this partnership, Nio and Changan Automobile will jointly contribute to the development and transformation of the industry,” Li said.
Changan, one of China’s leading automotive businesses, is located in the Jiangbei neighborhood of the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing.
According to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), Changan’s retail sales in China were 1,130,884 units, up 12.5 percent yearly, placing the company third with a 6.5 percent share.
During that time, BYD and FAW-Volkswagen had 12.4 percent and 8.5 percent of the market share, respectively.
According to its charging map, the firm now has 2,113 battery swap stations in China, with more than 32.4 million battery exchange services.
The general public was skeptical of the availability of battery swap services in the early days.
According to a December 2021 article by local media source LatePost, Li was certain from the outset that this was the ideal path to follow and utilized it as the starting point for Nio’s underlying strategy.
