DiDi and CATL form joint venture for battery swapping

DiDi and CATL announced the establishment of a joint venture for battery swapping.

On January 26, DiDi and CATL announced the establishment of a joint venture for battery swapping in Ningde City, east China’s Fujian Province. Cheng Wei, chairman and CEO of DiDi, and Robin Zeng, chairman and general manager of CATL, attended the signing ceremony. 

Leveraging the technical advantages and operational capabilities of both parties, the joint venture will start from online car-hailing to provide efficient battery swapping services for new energy vehicles. This cooperation is an important strategic step for both parties in the field of public EV refueling. The two parties are committed to leading the industry in services and technologies standards, improving the resource utilization, and enhancing the social operation efficiency. In addition to the establishment of a joint venture, CATL also signed a letter of intent for strategic cooperation with Orange Energy, a subsidiary of DiDi, to explore other business opportunities in the new energy sector including integrated energy storage and charging.

DiDi has a long-standing commitment to improving the vehicle sharing rate, promoting the development of carpooling, non-motorized transportation, and intelligent transportation, and supporting the electrification of transportation. Orange Energy focuses on exploring carbon neutrality solutions in the field of transportation and travel. Its business covers many sectors such as Internet refueling, smart battery charging, virtual power plant, electricity trading, electricity ancillary services, and enterprise services. As of the end of December 2023, the battery charging service of Orange Energy has covered more than 190 cities, providing more than 680 million times of battery charging services.

The public travel market features large consumer base, high EV refueling frequency and high requirement for timely refueling, making it one of the most valuable application scenarios of battery swapping services. With the establishment of this joint venture for battery swapping, the two parties will work closely to rapidly establish battery-swapping stations on a large scale, and promote battery-swapping vehicle models, so as to improve the operating efficiency of the public EV refueling market, and promote the green transformation of transportation.