CATL — 36 Battery Swap Stations for Hong Kong, 3000 Total This Year

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Going through our CATL archives, I see tons of articles about sodium-ion batteries, but I have to go back more than a year to find a story about CATL battery swapping stations. The company is moving forward with this in places, though.

CATL is apparently planning to launch 36 battery swap stations in Hong Kong — by 2030. Well, it’s nothing compared to what NIO is doing, but it’s still a significant plan when considering how much this option has been ignored by others in the industry.

The Chinese battery giant has announced that it does now have two Choco battery swap stations live in Hong Kong. These swap stations and the ones to come are targeted for use by high-mileage (or high-kilometer) vehicles, taxis and logistics vehicles. Aside from apartment dwellers or others who don’t have convenient home (or workplace) charging, these are the uses that could really benefit from battery swapping capability.

The cars using the battery swap stations are Hongqi E-QM5 EVs. These have been designed specifically to use CATL’s Choco-SEB swap technology. A car’s battery can be swapped in just 99 seconds.

Also note that Hong Kong is mountainous, so electric cars can lose range quickly.

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu actually made a visit to a CATL site on June 24. He checked out the Choco swap cars, light trucks, and vans, and also experienced a quick battery swap in a taxi.

While this is the first time this year we’ve covered CATL’s battery swapping progress, the company does plan to reach 3,000 battery swap stations in 2026. And that would be across 190 cities. At the moment, the company does have more than 50 stations each in Chongqing, Guangzhou, and Beijing. Maybe we’ll find more stories on CATL battery swapping soon in order to keep better track of what’s happening there.