Geely Holding chairman Li Shufu said on 5 November that Geely fully endorses the battery swap model, arguing that a vehicle’s service life extends well beyond the life of its battery. He was speaking at an automotive session of the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, alongside Nio founder and chairman Li Bin.
His argument is about cost and lifespan rather than convenience. A new battery pack is too expensive to buy outright, he said, and dismantling, refurbishing and repairing an old pack is also costly. Swapping is the alternative. Li expects the problem to become visible only as China’s electric fleet ages, since mass adoption began relatively recently, and he framed the eventual target as a vehicle usable for 20 years with a battery that remains serviceable throughout.
The warranty clock is already running
A 2015 policy from four ministries requires new energy passenger car makers to provide at least eight years or 120,000 km of battery warranty. The first wave of vehicles has begun to fall out of cover.
A recommended national standard, GB/T 46991.1-2025, took effect on 1 July this year and sets a measurable floor: at eight years or 160,000 km, a light passenger vehicle’s battery must retain at least 75 per cent of its usable energy.
That standard changes the nature of the problem. A warranty expiry is invisible to a buyer. A published state-of-health threshold is not.
Geely already bought its position
On 28 September, Geely Holding took a 30 per cent stake in Nio Power, contributing 100 per cent of its Yiyi Hulian battery swap business plus RMB 640 million in cash. The two sides are to share swap technology and standards.
That deal is the substance behind Li’s endorsement. A chairman saying he agrees with a business model is cheap. A group contributing its entire swap subsidiary and cash for a minority stake in a competitor’s network is a position.
Why swap becomes a used-car story
Battery degradation has been treated as a technical risk that warranties absorb. Once state of health is measured, disclosed and standardised, it becomes a valuation input. Two identical three-year-old electric cars with 92 and 81 per cent remaining capacity are not the same asset, and the second one will be priced accordingly.
Swapping changes that arithmetic in a specific way. If the pack can be exchanged, the buyer is no longer buying a particular battery. The degradation risk moves to whoever owns the pool, and the pool owner monetises it through subscription and energy pricing rather than through residual value.
That is why the standard matters more than the rhetoric. Whoever operates the largest compliant swap network in China ends up holding the residual value risk for a large part of the used electric fleet, and charging for it.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Gasgoo report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://auto.gasgoo.com/news/202611/9I70477362C109.shtml.