Geely to set up these battery swapping stations around the world, Malaysia?
China’s electric vehicle adoption rate is probably the fastest growing in the world right now and the dozens of local electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers are jostling for market share as urban Chinese car buyers look to switch to EV’s. The Chinese government is promoting EV-related infrastructure facilities, including charging stations and battery swapping stations.
However, there is still issues with available charging infrastructure and the high costs associated with buying an electric vehicle.
This is why EV battery swapping has been an idea that has been adopted by Chinese owned battery manufacturers and so far there are about 300 plus battery swapping stations in operation in China.
Chinese car manufacturing giant Geely has just announced (Sunday 26th September 2021) that it aims to set up 5,000 battery swapping stations for electric vehicles globally by 2025, as sales grow in the world’s biggest vehicle market.
In May this year, the Geely Technology Group started rolling out its quick battery swapping service for low costs and with maximum convenience. He first phase of this drive-through project was targeted for the CaoCao ride-hailing cars which need quick service to be back on the road earning money.
Then in July 2021 another Chinese EV automaker Nio Inc announced their plans to have 4,000 battery swapping stations globally by 2025. Nio also shared news of their proposed 700 battery swapping stations for China only by the end on 2021, which is just 3 months away. NIO currently has already built 301 NIO Power Swap stations, 204 Power Charger stations and 382 destination charging stations in China and completed more than 2.9 million swaps and 600,000 uses of One-Click-for-Power services.
The above proposals will be interesting to watch as there is definitely a case for the use for battery swapping in high-usage (ride sharing and taxis especially) vehicles, but a formidable set of standards and practices have to be developed and enforced to maintain safety and also quality.
However, it remains to be seen how cost-effective battery swapping will be in the long run as the cost of mining the raw materials and also the cost of battery production is still an issue that is being set aside for the main agenda which is ‘climate change’.
It has been reported that the worldwide market for cathode for lithium ion battery, the most common rechargeable car battery, was estimated at USD7 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach USD58.8 billion by 2024 which means that battery producers new and old might be using political might to prevent full detailed reports from being shared.
