British oil supermajor British Petroleum has inked a deal with Shanghai-based electric car battery solutions provider Aulton New Energy Automotive Technology that will see it build battery swap stations in China.
In contrast to the more usual method of recharging depleted batteries at a charging station, battery swapping involves swapping dead batteries with fully charged ones.
While it is faster than traditional charging, the infrastructure required to service the rapidly growing Chinese “new energy” vehicle market is currently lacking.
Around 160,000 battery swap cars and nearly 900 battery swap facilities have already been installed in China, primarily in the taxi, logistics, and rental sectors.
Battery swapping offers various advantages, primarily that it takes only three minutes, which is faster than charging, and can reduce the upfront cost of buying an EV as the battery can be offered on subscription.
According to China Daily, Aulton claims to have developed more than 20 electric vehicle models that are compatible with the company’s battery-swapping network, which it shares with 14 major automakers, including BAIC Group, FAW Group, Dongfeng Motor, Changan Automobile, SAIC Motor, and GAC Group.
We could not verify this as the company’s website was not reachable, but EV Smart reports that Aulton is considered one of China’s “Big 3” battery swap companies alongside Nio and Geely, which owns Volvo and Polestar. SAIC also has battery swap EVs such as this one made by its subsidiary Roewe.
The Chinese report says that by 2025, Aulton expects to have completed the building of 10,000 swap stations, which will be able to serve more than 10 million electric vehicles.
Nio, a Chinese electric car company that sells three EVs that can both switch batteries or power up at a charging station and has plans to install 4,000 battery swap stations by 2025, recently installed its first battery swap outside China in Norway where it already sells its Nio ES8 SUV.
Nio now has 609 battery switching stations in China, with plans to add more than 700 by the end of the year and 600 per year between 2022 and 2025.
Battery swapping does have its challenges, however, including a lack of shared technical standards and operations management.
Nio has aided in the design and revision of 21 battery switching standards, according to a Nio executive. In an effort to meet the switching demands of more private passenger automobiles, it will take the lead in setting rules for electricity metering and billing next year.
The BP-Aulton agreement follows the recent Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announcement that proposes 11 Chinese cities join a pilot initiative to accelerate the development of battery swapping infrastructure.
In the selected cities, the programme is projected to stimulate the production of more than 100,000 battery changing vehicles and 1,000 battery swapping stations within two years.
Beijing, Nanjing in Jiangsu province, Wuhan in Hubei province, Sanya in Hainan province, Chongqing, Changchun in Jilin province, Hefei in Anhui province, and Jinan in Shandong province are the eight main municipalities and cities that will host passenger and commercial vehicle stations.
Oil and gas major BP has a number of clean technology projects ranging from solar farms and offshore wind to green hydrogen.
However, whether it is doing enough to make reparations for its role in contributing to carbon emissions is questionable. In December 2020, tech entrepreneur Mike Cannon-brooked said he had personally invested more in cleantech in the twelve months prior than the global giant.
Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model Y and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.