Geely to Take 30% Stake in NIO Power as Automakers Deepen Battery-Swap Tie

Geely has room to increase its holding. Within two years, it can invest another RMB 640 million to raise its stake to 34%. The 30% stake is tied to some operating milestones; if performance falls short, the stake may be adjusted downward but will not go below 20%. In the other direction, NIO will take a 10% stake in Geely's Haohan Energy after the transaction. The related funds will be used for Haohan Energy to buy some charging assets from NIO. The two companies will thus form a larger charging and battery-swap camp.

New models are part of the plan. Geely and NIO will jointly advance consumer-facing battery-swap technology and standards, and Geely's mobility service vehicles and consumer-facing models may adopt battery-swap solutions. NIO users will also be able to access Geely's charging network more conveniently. Specific models and launch timing have not been announced, and the automakers described this part as an initial plan. The operating-vehicle market path is clearer: Cao Cao Mobility and Ruilan already have battery-swap models, and with Yiyi Interconnect folded into NIO Power, that business has a direct basis for integration. On the consumer side, main Geely brands such as Zeekr and Galaxy have invested heavily in ultra-fast charging and cell-to-body integration, reducing the need for existing models to switch to battery swap. Which brand and model Geely will ultimately hand to NIO's swap network is the key product question.

Li Bin said at a morning media briefing that the cooperation had taken about three years to gestate, as the two sides gradually formed a consensus and finally decided to pool resources and work together. The cooperation can be traced to November 2023, when Geely and NIO signed a strategic battery-swap cooperation agreement covering battery standards, battery-swap technology, network construction and operation, battery-swap vehicle development and battery asset management. The Sept. 28 transaction makes Geely different from NIO's earlier swap partners. Over recent years, NIO has established battery-swap cooperation with automakers including Changan and GAC, but most of those arrangements focused on technology standards and network sharing. With Geely entering NIO Power's equity and operating system, the relationship moves from technical coordination toward long-term interest alignment. For NIO, this is the first time its battery-swap network, built over nearly a decade, has a partner at the automaker level.

As of Sept. 26, NIO had 4,126 battery-swap stations nationwide. Its Silk Road battery-swap route was connected a few days earlier, running from Xi'an to Khorgos. In the Xingxingxia Service Area, the first stop on the G30 Lianhuo Expressway after entering Xinjiang, in the eastern Gobi, NIO has put into operation its first zero-carbon off-grid solar-storage battery-swap station. Relying on solar power and storage, the station can operate 24 hours a day in areas with weak grid coverage. NIO hopes future battery-swap stations will not only recharge vehicles but also use their batteries for energy storage. Geely also mentioned charging-swap integration. Under the two companies' vision, future ToB and ToC charging networks can share more sites and resources, and charging, battery swapping and storage can be further connected to take part in broader energy coordination. NIO plans for NIO Power to have 10,000 cumulative battery-swap stations by 2030, when the network's annual electricity use is expected to exceed 10 billion kWh. The network is still far from the end of construction and will require continued investment.

At this stage, Geely's investment in NIO Power carries more weight than simply adding one battery-swap model. It brings not only new users but also capital and assets. Ten years ago, NIO needed to prove that battery swapping could work. It built stations and network alone and bore doubts about the heavy-asset model by itself. Ten years later, the network has thousands of stations and a sufficiently large user base, and it has finally attracted the first large automaker willing to pay. For NIO, battery swapping may only now be entering its real second phase.