While the US seems to be heading back down a road towards combustion engines and European manufacturers hedge their bets, China is going full steam ahead with it electric vehicle development, with the latest innovation being the introduction of more battery swap stations. 

Battery swap stations have been talked about for some time, but Chinese company, CATL, wants to make them a reality, installing 1,000 stations in 31 cities across China by the end of this year. Each station will have the capacity to swap a battery in under 2 minutes and could carry out 822 swaps per day.

Changan Automobile recently produced the first 1,000 units of the Oshan 520, a car built for taxi use that incorporates CATL’s new Choco-SEB swappable battery packs. CATL, is actually the world’s largest EV battery supplier, with its units found in GAC, Chery, Nio, SAIC, FAW, BAIC and many other Chinese EVs. 

Having such a pool of vehicles to draw on in the future will make the swap stations highly viable and might even bring the end to much conventional charging.   

Many other Chinese EV makers are also keen to get in on the act, meaning swapping rather than charging could quickly become the norm in China.