CATL and BAIC Sign Battery Swap Deal Aimed at a Million Cars, Three Days After Huawei's Unit Joined Choco-Swap

China's battery swapping push got two large partners inside four days. On October 22, BAIC Group and CATL signed an agreement covering joint vehicle and battery development, swap station construction, battery energy services and new business models, CnEVPost reported. BAIC will connect compatible models from several of its brands to CATL's Choco-Swap network and open its dealer network as sites for stations. The stated goal is China's first mature swap ecosystem serving vehicles at the million level. The two had signed a first swap agreement in June 2024.

BAIC already has cars on the system. The Arcfox Beta S3, launched in May 2026, uses CATL's Choco-SEB standardised pack with a battery rental option, and a swap version of the Arcfox Beta T1 appeared in Chinese regulatory filings in August.

Three days earlier, on October 19, Huawei's smart car unit Newcool signed a strategic cooperation framework with CATL and its energy service arm CAES to build a swap ecosystem around vehicles running Huawei's Qiankun software, with a first batch of five swap models planned for 2027. The pitch is a fully automated 99 second swap, with the car finding the station and handling the exchange itself.

The station count is the weak spot

CATL had 2,520 swap stations in 200 Chinese cities as of September 29, 2026, with a long-term target of 30,000 and 1,000 highway stations planned for 2026 to 2027 along 11 north-south and 9 east-west corridors. That long-term figure carries no deadline, and it is roughly twelve times what is built today.

For scale, NIO, which has been swapping since 2018, had 4,178 swap stations and 5,424 charging stations in China as of October 13, 2026, 9,602 sites in all, and more than 120 million cumulative swaps. Signing carmakers is the easy half. Million-vehicle traffic needs stations that are never more than a few minutes away, and CATL is still at about 60 per cent of NIO's swap footprint.

What it changes for India

Nothing directly. CATL does not sell cars here, no Indian carmaker offers a swappable pack, and the Choco-SEB standard is written for Chinese platforms. India's swapping runs on e-rickshaws and delivery two-wheelers, where packs are small enough to lift by hand and the vehicles earn money by the hour.

That part of the business keeps attracting money. Battery Smart raised about ₹98 crore from existing investor Ecosystem Integrity Fund on October 17, 2026, a top-up to the ₹185.5 crore Series C it closed in August, at a post-money valuation of about ₹4,170 crore. Its FY26 revenue was ₹358 crore, up 43.8 per cent, with net losses narrowing 12.8 per cent to ₹23.55 crore. For a swap network, that mix matters more than station counts, because every pack sitting in a cabinet is working capital.

Indofast Energy, the IndianOil and SUN Mobility joint venture, claims more than 2,050 stations, 137,000 vehicles onboarded and over 82 million swaps on its website. Its tie-up with charging operator GLIDA, announced on August 11, 2026, starts with 10 quick interchange stations in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad, sharing power-ready sites with fast chargers. That is the Indian version of what CATL is attempting in China, at one hundredth the pack size and without a car in sight.

Sources

• CATL expands battery swap partnership as BAIC plans adoption across multiple brands, CnEVPost
• BAIC and CATL aim to accelerate battery swap approach, electrive
• Huawei's smart car unit partners with CATL, joins Choco battery swap ecosystem, CnEVPost
• NIO adds two charging and battery swap stations on October 13, bringing China total to 9,602, Gasgoo
• Battery Smart tops up Series C round with $10 Mn, Entrackr
• Indofast Energy official site
• Indofast Energy, GLIDA join hands to expand battery-swapping network, Outlook Business