(Bloomberg) — CATL, the world’s largest electric vehicle battery maker, is evaluating whether to expand its battery-swapping business to the European market, an executive at the company said, according to CNBC.
In January this year, CATL announced its entry into the power exchange industry, releasing EVOGO, a brand for power exchange services, and a combined power exchange solution, with plans to launch the first batch of power exchange services in 10 cities. CATL combined power exchange solution consists of three products: “power exchange block, quick exchange station and app”. In April this year, the CATL EVOGO power exchange service was officially launched in Xiamen, which is also the first city where the service has landed.
And Azure, which has been laying out the power exchange market, told Reuters this week that its co-founder Qin Lihong plans to build 1,000 exchanges outside China by 2025, most of them in Europe.
Li Xiaoning, executive president of overseas commercial applications at CATL, said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that the company is also evaluating expanding its battery-swap offerings to Europe. “We are starting to evaluate potential cooperation with many partners. We need to understand the details in practice,” he added, “and there are many things we are considering. Product technology is one thing, another thing is the business case, regulations, local rules, and other factors we need to consider as well.”
If CATL expands its business overseas, it could help foreign automakers offer power-swap services to customers without having to build their own expensive infrastructure.
CATL is facing various challenges, including rising costs of raw materials such as lithium, but the company still doubled its profit in the second quarter as demand for electric vehicles continues to be strong.
Separately, Matthias Zentgraf, president of Europe for Chinese battery maker CATL, said in an interview that the company is considering opening a third plant in Europe and that internal discussions are underway but no definitive decision has been made, according to Bloomberg, which said, “If there is no demand, we will not build a third plant .”
