Another battery swap service goes live in China
EVOGO has become the second battery swap service available in China, after the NIO pioneers. The new service was announced back in January and is part of CATL - China’s largest battery maker. The charges start at around £62 for a battery block and that block is where the biggest difference between NIO and EVOGO services is.
Unlike with NIO, this new service gives you the option of how many batteries you want to swap depending on the distance you want to drive. Sounds confusing but it actually is very simple.
Single battery block offers around 200km range and depending on the vehicle, you can have as many as 3 battery blocks. The station takes around 1 minute to swap the block and it’s drive-through type, there’s no need to reverse out of the bay. You simple drive in, wait one minute and drive out.
The battery blocks used by EVOGO are produced by CATL and use the latest Cell To Pack technology with a density of over 160Wh per kilogram. According to the manufacturer, this battery technology can be adapted by 80 percent of all EV models already available in global markets. The first car to take advantage of this new technology and service is the electric taxi called NAT which stands for Next Automatic Taxi. It is manufactured by Bestune which in turn is part of FAW - second largest vehicle producer and part of the “Big Four” state owned car manufacturers.
The new battery swap stations are available in 4 locations to start and EVOGO plans to grow the network to 30 stations in Xiamen by the end of this year. Once the plan is executed it will mean a battery station in every 3km radius which should finish range anxiety according to the company statement. China is moving at the speed of light, the progress is immense and new ideas are implemented really fast. At what cost we can’t really tell but China is pushing really hard to electrify the whole nation.
Are you a fan of battery swap tech? Or would you prefer to see more efforts invested in traditional plug-in charging? Let us know in the comments.
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