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First EV using 'choco swap' battery to be rolled out this

month

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Subscription fee for the service starts at 369 yuan per

month

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CATL aims to build 1,000 battery swapping stations next

year

(Adds details, background)

XIAMEN, China, Dec 18 (Reuters) - CATL said

on Wednesday it had co-developed 10 new electric vehicle models

with automakers that use swappable batteries, as the Chinese

battery giant seeks to lead a trend it says will replace a third

of gasoline stations in China.

Yang Jun, CEO of CATL's battery swapping brand EVOGO, said

it would roll out the first EV that uses its so-called

"choco-swap" battery this month, with the remaining to be

launched in upcoming months.

CATL will also look to build 1,000 battery swapping stations

next year and to accelerate this further by enlisting partners

to build more stations, he added.

The world's largest battery maker has also been seeking to

expand in new business sectors such as micro power grids and

skateboard chassis, CATL's chairman Robin Zeng told Reuters in

an interview in November.

It launched the EVOGO battery swap service in 2022, which it

said would allow drivers to change EV batteries in one minute.

Its automaker partners include state-owned Changan Auto and FAW

and to date it has built a small number of charging stations

across a few Chinese cities on a trial basis.

The subscription fee for the choco-swap battery swapping

service starts from 369 yuan ($51) per month, Yang said at an

event in China's southern city of Xiamen to talk about battery

swapping. Zeng told the same event that the batteries would come

with two standard sizes to speed up adoption.

The hope, Zeng added, was that the choco-swap battery

swapping stations would use as much green energy as possible and

play a role in stabilising the power grid.

China could eventually have 30,000-40,000 battery swapping

stations which could replace a third of its roughly 100,000

gasoline stations, Yang predicted. Zeng said that he expected

battery swapping to make up a third of power-up solutions for

EVs alongside home and public chargers by 2030.

Chinese EV maker Nio is another player that has

been investing heavily in battery swapping stations and

technologies that allow an EV user to replace depleted batteries

with a fully charged one in three minutes. Nio has built more

than 2,800 such stations, mainly in China, as of early December.

Infrastructure is a key bottleneck for EV growth globally,

which has been slowing this year. Chinese automakers such as Nio

and Xpeng ( XPEV ) are also preparing to offer extended range

hybrids, especially for overseas markets where EV charging and

battery swapping facilities are insufficient.

($1 = 7.2866 Chinese yuan renminbi)