• Battery swap system replaces entire EV battery pack in a claimed 3 minutes, instead of waiting for your battery to charge
• Two big names in the market could help speed up the rollout of the new technology

Geely Holding Group — the parent company of Geely Auto Group, Zeekr Group, Volvo and Lotus Cars — has recently signed a deal to take a 30% stake in Nio Power, which is an EV battery swap business that promises to give your car a fresh fully charged battery in a matter of minutes when you're running low.

Unlike traditional EV charging stations, which require customers to pull up, plug in and wait anywhere between around 10 minutes (from the scant few MegaWatt chargers in existence) to over an hour on the slowest chargers, Nio’s innovative battery swap business just replaces the entire battery pack.

Currently only compatible with Nio’s range of electric vehicles, the battery swap stations look like small automated garages, where the driver pulls in, follows the instructions and waits around three minutes for a fully charged pack to be placed into the underside of the vehicle autonomously.

The spent packs can then be charged at a much lower rate, often during off-peak hours and with renewables, which reduces the strain on the grid and the cost of charging.

To take advantage of the system, owners typically lease the battery technology with monthly payments, which effectively means they never own the battery pack outright but can take advantage of some the fastest EV “recharging” currently available.

The Geely deal, which is complex and still requires regulatory approval, would see Nio trade part of its charging business for a stake in Geely’s own rival battery swapping technology business.

It comes almost five years after Nio announced plans to open its battery swap network up to other manufacturers, with numerous EV makers hinting that a joint battery standard could help rapidly increase the speed of a global rollout.

According to Electrek, Geely signed a strategic partnership on battery swapping with Nio in November 2023, but this is the first deal to involve assets and cash.

Analysis: a slow burn

Nio Power announced in February this year that it had surpassed 100 million battery swaps since launching its service, with some 3,790 swap station online and active at that time.

Most of these are in China, but Nio has found success in parts of Europe, especially Scandinavia where its EL6 SUV and ET5 Touring Estate have both sold in respectable numbers.

The Geely Holding Group’s investment will likely lead to a faster rollout of battery swap solutions for its massive commercial vehicle fleet in China, which is arguably the larger and more profitable market for battery swap seeing as any fleet downtime due to EV charging can adversely effect the bottom line.

That said, reports suggest the two companies do plan to jointly develop unified battery swap technologies and standards, which could see more Geely models become available that are compatible.

Given the rising popularity of Geely EVs outside of China, an increase in the number of EVs on the road with the required battery swap tech could lead to a much faster expansion of the service across global markets.

Geely and Nio might not be household names right now, but they both sell a of cars, and are pushing to grow worldwide — having their joint backing behind near-instant battery swapping could mean that getting a fresh 100% battery in your EV finally becomes as fast as filling a fuel tank.