China discussing EV battery swap station standards

China’s Association of Automobile Manufacturers has this week published documents soliciting opinions on the creation of technical standards for the construction of electric vehicle (EV) battery swap stations.

While EV battery swapping has yet to catch on in the West, it is a growing trend in Asia, and in China particularly where Chinese EV manufacturer Nio has taken it to the next level by offering owners of its EVs a “Battery as a Subscription” service.

Nio, for a monthly fee, allows customers to essentially “rent” batteries and, instead of relying solely on charging stations or home charging, provides battery swap stations for when a Nio car battery begins to near the end of its charge.

Nio is hoping that its battery swap technology will take root in other countries, and in May it announced it will expand its battery swapping service to Europe. In July, at the company’s own “Power Day”, Nio promised to deploy nearly 4,000 battery swap stations worldwide by 2025.

On a smaller scale, for example, Taiwanese electric scooter manufacturer Gogoro has designed a battery swapping platform for its Smartscooter which allows customers to swap out a used battery for a new one, avoiding any recharge delays.

As battery swapping becomes more common, then, it is unsurprising that the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) has made a move towards developing technical standards for the construction of battery swapping stations.

Announced through CAAM’s Chinese-language website on Tuesday, the organisation published 15 draft documents outlining the necessary technical codes and specifications for the construction of battery swap stations and are now soliciting comments on the drafts.

While the published drafts are all in Mandarin, and highly technical to boot, with the help of Google Translate they are nevertheless generally readable for the average EV enthusiast or battery expert.

During the formulation of these draft codes and standards, CAAM met with dozens of industry experts and stakeholders, including experts from Beijing Jiaotong University and the China Automotive Research Institute, and stakeholders such as Nio, SAIC, and Ford Battery.

Comments and suggestions are requested to be submitted before September 12.