Battery swapping is taking off in China — and it could help rescue the EV revolution in the US

• The EV revolution is stalling in the US amid concerns over affordability and charging times.
• Experts think battery swapping, which charges EVs in as little as five minutes, could be a solution.

America's EV revolution is stalling — and the time it takes to charge an electric car is at the heart of the issue.

Right now, charging your EV can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 50 hours depending on how you do it, and anxieties over range and charging are putting many drivers off going electric.

Battery swapping, which sees dead EV batteries replaced with fully charged ones in a process that can take less than five minutes, might provide a solution — and it's an approach being used by one of Tesla's biggest Chinese rivals.

The Tesla rival pioneering battery-swapping

Founded by entrepreneur William Li — sometimes referred to as "China's Elon Musk" — in 2014, Nio has built a network of more than 2,000 battery swap stations in China.

The company allows customers to buy their cars without paying for the full cost of the battery, and then charges them a monthly subscription fee to simply swap out their dead batteries whenever they run out of charge.

Aside from lowering the upfront cost of an electric car, Nio's battery-swapping system also has other benefits, its senior vice-president Fei Shen told Business Insider.

"In areas of China where battery swap stations are fairly widespread, users can upgrade their battery from 75 kilowatt hours to 100 kilowatt hours for only 50 yuan ($7) per day," he said.

"What we find, is that more users will buy or lease cars with the 75 kilowatt hours battery instead of this 100 kilowatt hours battery because the price is lower. When they go on long-distance journeys, like going back to their hometown, they can upgrade to a long-distance battery in one of our swap stations," he added.

Nio's battery-swapping strategy has picked up traction in the fiercely competitive Chinese EV market in recent months, with the company signing deals with fellow electric vehicle makers Geely, JAC, and Chery to jointly develop battery-swapping tech.

However, it remains far more expensive than regular charging, with Shen telling BI that only around 20% of Nio's "swap stations" are breaking even, and the company has yet to make a profit.

Despite this, Nio is planning to significantly expand its operations, including outside China. The company has set up 30 battery swap stations in Europe, and is planning to launch a new range of affordable EVs in an attempt to boost sales in the continent.

US challenges

Nio's battery swap stations — around the size of a small car wash — are unlikely to appear on US roads anytime soon, with Chinese automakers largely shut out from the US market thanks to high tariffs.

That's a blow for American consumers, who have begun to turn their backs on EVs amid a dearth of affordable options and concerns over charging and range.

Experts told BI that battery swapping offers a solution to many of those concerns — in theory.

"From a purely technological point of view, it is the panacea. It solves all of the big problems people have with EVs," said Dylan Khoo, an analyst at ABI Research.

He pointed out that the most powerful plug-in battery chargers still take 20 minutes to charge an EV up to 80%, with many battery swap stations able to swap in a fully charged battery under five.

John Helveston, a professor of engineering at George Washington University, agreed, telling BI that a nationwide network of battery-swapping stations would effectively eradicate range anxiety and make charging an EV as simple as filling up with gas.

However, he said that battery swapping faces a more challenging outlook in the US than in China, with the sheer number of EVs being sold in China meaning that automakers can build their own swapping networks without depending on striking deals with their rivals.

"China has such a higher scale in terms of the volumes of EVs being sold, that any one automaker making a particular vehicle, they can actually design their car to be swappable and they don't necessarily have to have a battery that works with other competitors," he said.

Helveston added that China's efficient urban transport links mean there's less need for EVs to have massive range-boosting batteries than in the more scattered US, something which makes battery swapping far easier.

"Nobody needs to drive 300 miles in a car in China. That's sort of an insane idea. And that means you can buy a much smaller battery, which is much easier to swap," he said.

Share to succeed

Khoo told BI that establishing a battery-swapping network in the US would require intense collaboration between US automakers, who would have to agree to use batteries with a similar size and design.

"A lot of the automakers in the West are a bit more protective and defensive. They want to have a lot more ownership and they wouldn't necessarily be as comfortable with sharing this big network because the battery is really the key defining component of EVs," he said.

Even Nio, which has pioneered the technology and persuaded many of its rivals to jump on board, acknowledges that it is a big leap for many automakers.

"Battery swapping is not a light innovation. It's a heavy innovation because battery swap is closely connected with the vehicle design and the sales model," said Dr Shen.

"Even in China where we have cooperated with other automakers, it's not easy for them to make the decision to work with Nio on battery swapping," he added.

Potential solution

One US company that says it has a solution to this problem is Californian startup Ample.

The San Francisco-based firm has developed battery swap stations that can swap in a fully charged battery in five minutes, which the company says can be adjusted to work with any EV, regardless of battery type.

"If you go to an automaker and say, look, the way you work with us is to rebuild all your cars, that's a tall order," said Ample cofounder John De Souza.

Ample, which in the future plans to charge users a battery subscription fee to use its swap stations, has battery swap stations operating in Spain, Japan, and California, where it has worked mainly with fleet providers such as Uber.

The firm's approach to battery swapping is beginning to win over major automakers, with Stellantis striking a deal with Ample to power a fleet of its Fiat 500e vehicles in Spain as part of a car-sharing service.

If the partnership is successful, it could expand to the US in the future, with the Fiat 500e set to launch stateside this year and De Souza confirmed that the two companies are looking into extending the partnership to other markets, including the US.

Ample believes this technology could help save consumers time and hassle spent at the charging pumps while also bringing the upfront cost of an EV down.

That's something De Souza believes will be essential if EVs are ever going to replace gas cars in the US.

"The only way you're going to have this mass transition from gas to electric is if you could go through and make charging as convenient and as cheap as gas," he said.