Nio and Geely Join Forces on Battery Swap and Charging to Rein in China's EV Price Wars

Nio has struck a wide-ranging partnership with Geely Holding Group that ties their charging and battery swap operations together, a move Nio founder and CEO William Li framed as a collective answer to China’s push against destructive competition. Speaking at a signing ceremony in Hangzhou, Li argued that pooling the two automakers’ accumulated infrastructure would cut down on duplicated spending and sharpen how efficiently the industry innovates.

Under the deal, Geely takes a 30 percent slice of Nio Power, paying with its full equity stake in commercial fleet battery swap unit Yiyi Power plus 640 million yuan (roughly $94.8 million) in cash. Nio China, meanwhile, picks up a 10 percent interest in Geely’s Haohan Energy. The two sides also intend to co-develop battery swap technology and standards for passenger vehicles and link up their charging networks more tightly.

Li pointed to Nio’s own infrastructure record as evidence the model works. Over 11 years the company has poured more than 20 billion yuan into charging and swapping, securing over 2,100 related patents and building 9,433 charging and swap stations across China that have handled more than 220 million combined services, including 4,126 swap stations and over 125 million swaps. He said the network’s scale has become a genuine competitive edge in the user experience, and that the fifth-generation swap station brought online in August can now fit the body dimensions of over 95 percent of passenger cars on the market, opening the door to serving additional brands.

Beyond vehicles, Li highlighted swap stations as grid assets useful for peak shaving and frequency regulation, projecting that annual electricity demand across Nio’s swap network could top 10 billion kWh by 2030. He described the Geely tie-up as an open platform for the wider industry and extended an invitation to other automakers to join. Nio aims to reach 10,000 swap stations by 2030, while Haohan Energy is targeting 22,000 charging stations by the end of 2027.