NIO (NIO) and CATL have signed a 5-year cooperation agreement to collaborate on long-life battery and battery swap technology in the new energy vehicle (NEV) industry.
The two will build an NEV industrial cluster in Hefei, China to deepen synergies in Battery as a Service (BaaS) business models and develop an open battery swap industry ecosystem.
The recent agreement builds on an earlier partnership in which CATL will support NIO in building the world’s largest battery swapping network, while CATL’s Choco-Swap technical standards and network will be introduced to the subsequent newly developed models of NIO’s firefly model.
The networks of both parties will operate in parallel, offering EV users a more seamless and efficient swapping experience.
NIO (NIO) had previously relied exclusively on CATL for batteries but later broadened its supplier base to include BYD (BYDDY) for its BEV models. The company has since scaled back that strategy, however, as weaker-than-expected demand for certain models no longer supported sourcing batteries from multiple suppliers.