CATL is considering expanding its new battery swapping business called EVOGO outside of China and into international markets, including Europe.
In an interview with CNBC Li Xiaoning, executive president of overseas commercial application at CATL, said the company is taking a “step by step” approach in how they plan to expand the service outside of China.
“We are starting to evaluate the potential cooperation with many partners. We need to understand the detail in practice. There are many things we consider. Product technology is one thing, another is the business case, the regulation, the local rules, and also other factors we need to think of as well,” Xiaoning said.
In January CATL, China’s largest battery producer and Tesla supplier, announced that they would start a battery swap service for electric vehicles (EVs).
The EVOGO service launched in 10 cities across the country, allowing users to swap the battery in their electric vehicle (EV) in under one minute. The swap stations are compatible with EVs with CATL’s 26.5kWh LFP battery packs called Choco-SEB.
The only vehicle currently compatible with the Choco-SEBs is FAW Group’s Bestune NAT.
CATL is following the lead of NIO, which has an expansive network of more than 1,000 battery swapping stations. The over 1,000 stations have completed more than 10 million battery swaps, or the equivalent of about 30,000 swaps every day.
NIO recently expanded its battery swapping business into Europe, opening its first station in Norway earlier this year. The company has also started building the stations in Europe instead of exporting them out of China, delivering the first made-in-Europe station to Germany this week.
