Battery swapping industry in 2025: Ecosystem reconstruction, booming supply and demand
In 2025, the dominance and influence of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the global automotive market continued to grow. It is predicted that the year-on-year growth rate of the global BEV market in 2025 will be approximately between 25% and 35%, while the year-on-year growth rate of the Chinese market is expected to fall within the range of 30% to 40%, slightly higher than the global market, reflecting the growth resilience of the Chinese market.
According to data from CIC, the sales volume of BEVs in China increased from 1.1 million units in 2020 to 6.9 million units in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 57.0%. It is expected that the sales volume will reach 19 million units in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 18.5% from 2024 to 2030.
As one of the important ways to replenish energy for BEVs, the battery swapping industry has also shown a rapid development trend driven by factors such as the electrification wave, policy support, and growing market demand. Many participants have flocked to it, leveraging their respective technological, resource, and market advantages to accelerate the layout of battery swapping business and trying to gain a foothold in this emerging field.
01. The Initial Competition Pattern of the Battery Swapping Industry Has Taken Shape
The battery swapping industry witnessed leapfrog development in 2025, specifically manifested in the fact that the battery swapping businesses of major participants have entered the stage of accelerated implementation.
CATL is one of the most important participants in the battery swapping industry. It focuses on two core battery swapping solutions, namely "Chocolate Battery Swapping (for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles)" and "Qiji Battery Swapping (for heavy trucks)". Through technological innovation, strategic cooperation, network construction, and scenario expansion, it promotes the standardization and ecological development of the battery swapping industry.
For example, on March 17, CATL signed a strategic cooperation agreement with NIO to jointly build the world's largest battery swapping network and promote the unification of industry technical standards. On April 23, CATL signed strategic cooperation agreements with GAC Group, FAW Group, Changan Automobile, BAIC Group, and Chery Automobile, and jointly launched 10 new models with Chocolate Battery Swapping technology. On August 4, CATL, in collaboration with Times Electric Service, CAR Inc., and CMB Financial Leasing, signed a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly explore the battery swapping scenario in the car rental industry. It plans to deploy more than 100,000 battery-swappable vehicles relying on CAR Inc.'s more than 2,000 offline outlets and parking lot resources across the country. On November 9, the "People's Good Car" Aion UT super, jointly launched by CATL, JD.com, and GAC Group, entered the battery swapping market at a low price of 49,900 yuan, attracting wide attention from the outside world to battery-swappable models.
In 2025, CATL's battery swapping business showed a development pattern of "two lines running in parallel and multiple points blossoming". It planned to complete the goal of building 1,000 Chocolate Battery Swapping Stations within the year and build 300 Qiji Battery Swapping Stations in 13 key regions. According to the plan, the construction of CATL's battery swapping network will be significantly accelerated in 2026, aiming to build more than 2,500 Chocolate Battery Swapping Stations in 120 cities across the country. By 2030, the Qiji Battery Swapping Stations will form a "Eight Horizontal and Ten Vertical" green battery swapping network with a total scale of about 180,000 kilometers, covering 80% of the trunk line transportation capacity in the country and 16 major urban agglomerations.
NIO also demonstrated strong technological strength and competitiveness in the battery swapping field. In 2025, NIO made all-round efforts around three core directions: accelerating full coverage in counties, unifying technical standards, and jointly building a cross-brand ecosystem.
In the first half of 2025, NIO achieved "county-to-county battery swapping" in 14 provincial-level administrative regions and more than 1,200 county-level administrative regions, breaking through the "last mile" of energy replenishment in counties. It planned to achieve full coverage of battery swapping stations in 27 provincial-level administrative regions and more than 2,300 county-level administrative regions within the year, and tackle the remaining provincial-level administrative regions in 2026.
As of December 30, NIO had built a total of 3,665 battery swapping stations across the country. Especially along the highways, it had built the world's largest high-speed battery swapping network. In addition, NIO's fourth-generation battery swapping stations were accelerating their implementation in regions such as Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Anhui. It also planned to officially deploy the fifth-generation battery swapping stations on a large scale in the first quarter of 2026, and has currently launched pilot tests in Shanghai.
Driven by the three wheels of coverage network, technology, and ecosystem, NIO is accelerating the transformation of the battery swapping model from "NIO-exclusive" to "industry-universal".
Aulton New Energy has achieved remarkable results in battery swapping station operation and business expansion. In December 2025, Aulton New Energy officially submitted its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, aiming to become the "first battery swapping stock" in the Hong Kong stock market. The prospectus shows that as of the first half of 2025, Aulton New Energy had connected 521 battery swapping stations, covering 267 self-owned battery swapping stations and 254 third-party stations, with more than 130,000 registered electric vehicles and more than 160,000 managed batteries. Calculated by the revenue generated from battery swapping station operation services in 2024, Aulton New Energy is the largest independent third-party battery swapping solution provider in China.
In 2025, with many participants actively deploying battery swapping business, the battery swapping industry has entered the fast lane of development, and the competition pattern has evolved from NIO's "single dominance" to a situation where multiple forces are fiercely competing based on different strategic paths.
02. Key Pain Points in the Industry Still Need to Be Solved
In 2025, the battery swapping industry received a lot of policy support. From the national to the local level, the large-scale application of the battery swapping model was accelerated, promoting the battery swapping from a "niche pilot" to a "mainstream energy replenishment method".
For example, in September 2025, the "Three-Year Doubling Action Plan for the Service Capacity of Electric Vehicle Charging Facilities (2025 - 2027)" issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments clearly stated that battery swapping would be included as a key area for improving the service capacity of charging facilities. By 2027, the battery swapping network should cover major urban agglomerations and trunk line logistics channels, and the proportion of battery-swappable models should be significantly increased.
In addition, local governments have also introduced differentiated policies in line with local industrial characteristics to provide supporting support for the battery swapping industry. For example, Jiangsu has promoted the "Hundred Stations Co-construction Plan", piloted charging and battery swapping integrated stations in Nanjing and replicated them across the province. Guangdong encourages battery swapping enterprises to enter the Hong Kong and Macao markets, supports the construction of battery swapping stations at core transportation hubs, and aims to build an integrated battery swapping network in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
The support from the national and local governments has played a huge role in promoting the development of the battery swapping industry. CIC predicts that the sales volume of battery-swappable vehicles will continue to maintain a relatively high growth rate, increasing from 269,000 units in 2024 to 1.138 million units in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 27.1% from 2024 to 2030. The number of battery swapping stations for BEVs will increase from 4,400 in 2024 to 24,000 in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 32.5% from 2024 to 2030.
Although policy guidance helps to accelerate the construction and layout of battery swapping stations, promote technological progress and innovation, and further expand market demand, the battery swapping industry still faces many pain points and obstacles.
The battery swapping industry has long been plagued by the pain point of "standard fragmentation". As highly customized products, due to the different R & D directions and standards of power battery manufacturers, the power batteries produced cannot be unified in terms of energy density, battery structure, size specifications, etc. As a result, the power batteries of different brands cannot be used interchangeably, which means that battery swapping stations can only serve vehicles of a single brand, making it difficult to cover vehicles of more brands, thus increasing the construction and operation costs. Since consumers are restricted in choosing battery swapping services and cannot make free choices, the convenience and market attractiveness of the battery swapping model are reduced, resulting in idle and wasted resources.
The high construction and operation costs are also a major problem. Building a battery swapping station requires a huge amount of capital investment, including land leasing, equipment purchase, installation and commissioning, etc., which puts a heavy financial burden on battery swapping enterprises in the early stage of operation. In addition, the operation of battery swapping stations also requires a large amount of human and material resources, such as staff salaries, electricity bills, equipment maintenance costs, etc. These continuous operation costs further compress the profit margin, having a greater impact on the profitability of battery swapping enterprises and the development of the industry.
Take Aulton New Energy, which is still in the red, as an example. Its net losses from 2022 to the first half of 2025 were 785 million yuan, 655 million yuan, 419 million yuan, and 157 million yuan respectively. NIO also faces obvious financial pressure. So far, NIO has invested approximately 18 billion yuan in charging and battery swapping technology and infrastructure. In the next decade, NIO plans to invest another 5 billion yuan to further densify the battery swapping network.
From the perspective of development laws, the elimination of pain points in the battery swapping industry highly depends on the release of economies of scale, and the core prerequisite for economies of scale is the joint establishment of unified standards by automobile manufacturers and power battery manufacturers. However, the interest game and differences in development routes behind standard setting mean that the development of the battery swapping industry is destined not to be achieved overnight, but a long-term battle that requires long-term collaboration across the entire industry chain.
03. Battery-Swappable Commercial Vehicles "Achieve Success Indirectly"
With its advantages in efficient energy replenishment and operating costs in the commercial vehicle field, the battery swapping model has found an application scenario that matches it highly.
Currently, battery-swappable commercial vehicles are mainly heavy trucks. Heavy trucks are an important source of carbon emissions in transportation, and their electrification is one of the important goals of carbon neutrality. Heavy trucks are usually used for long-distance transportation, logistics distribution, or high-load operations, and their battery capacity is usually much higher than that of passenger cars. Therefore, even with direct current fast charging, it takes a long time to replenish energy, which greatly affects the operating efficiency. Due to the particularity of the use scenario and operating requirements, the battery swapping model has more advantages in terms of compatibility with heavy trucks compared to the charging model.
On the one hand, the battery swapping model enables heavy trucks to complete the energy replenishment of large-capacity batteries within a few minutes, meeting the continuous operation requirements of high-intensity transportation scenarios and ensuring the timeliness and economy of high-frequency transportation tasks. On the other hand, the operating routes of heavy trucks are usually relatively fixed, which provides convenient conditions for the layout and efficient operation of battery swapping stations and reduces the difficulty and cost of building the battery swapping network.
In addition, the batteries in heavy truck battery swapping stations adopt the slow charging maintenance mode, which can ensure the battery cycle life and at the same time carry out regular battery health detection, fault repair, and other maintenance measures, greatly reducing the operating costs.
CATL is currently the undisputed leader in the field of battery-swappable heavy trucks. In May 2025, CATL signed a provincial strategic cooperation agreement with the Shanxi provincial government and launched the construction of 41 Qiji Battery Swapping Stations in Linfen. According to the plan, 41 battery swapping stations will be built and 1,000 battery-swappable heavy trucks will be promoted in Linfen within the year. In the future, it will gradually expand to 60 battery swapping stations, and a total of 50,000 battery-swappable heavy trucks will be promoted by 2030. In addition, CATL has also built 11 Qiji Battery Swapping Stations in Shaanxi, centered around Xi'an and covering Yulin, Yan'an, Tongchuan, Baoji and other places. The first Qiji Battery Swapping Station in Xi'an is expected to be officially energized and put into operation in January 2026.
In 2025, NIO, CATL, and Aulton New Energy have occupied a certain market share in the battery swapping industry, forming an initial competition pattern. As the competition in the battery swapping market becomes increasingly fierce, the market concentration may further increase, and the advantages of leading battery swapping enterprises will become more obvious.
NIO is expected to maintain its leading position thanks to its first-mover advantage in the private car battery swapping market and extensive layout of battery swapping stations. CATL, although a latecomer, has also become an important participant in the battery swapping market, especially in the field of battery-swappable heavy trucks, where it will rapidly promote the development of its battery swapping business. At the same time, the development trend of traditional energy enterprises in the battery swapping field has shifted from initial exploration and layout to large-scale and networked accelerated implementation. Traditional energy enterprises have rich resource and channel advantages and will have a significant impact on the competition pattern in the future.
Overall, the battery swapping industry is in a critical development stage full of both opportunities and challenges. Only by accurately grasping industry opportunities and actively addressing potential challenges can enterprises occupy a favorable position in the new energy vehicle industry ecosystem and further accelerate the commercialization process of the battery swapping model.
This article is from the WeChat official account "DoNews" (ID: ilovedonews), author: Zhang Yu, editor: Yang Bocheng, published by 36Kr with authorization.