Gasgoo Munich- It's no longer news when automakers build their own charging stations.
From Tesla launching its first Superchargers in 2014 to NIO rolling out its inaugural battery swap station in 2018, charging infrastructure has always moved in lockstep with electric vehicle sales.
Yet since 2026, that pace has accelerated markedly.
Data from the China Passenger Car Association shows the retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles hit 67% in September — a record high. Charging networks are shifting from a mere sales accessory to the primary battleground for industry competition.
This September, Geely Holding and NIO announced a cross-shareholding deal. Then in October, Yinwang, CATL, and Contemporary Amperex EV Service signed a strategic cooperation agreement on intelligent charging ecosystems in Ningde.
Meanwhile, BYD's flash charging stations have surpassed 12,165, while Tesla's Supercharger network in China has topped 2,500.
From Geely and NIO's capital tie-up to BYD's 10,000-station scale, the way automakers deploy charging infrastructure is undergoing a distinct shift.
Yang Xi, a 13-year industry veteran, told Gasgoo in an interview: "In the early days, the core goal for automakers building their own networks was simply to 'avoid the embarrassment of selling cars.' Now, charging is becoming a key lever for differentiation."
From "Sales Accessory" to "Strategic Positioning": The Three Leaps in Charging Logic
The most direct reason automakers initially built their own networks was a shortage of public charging facilities. Without them, electric cars simply wouldn't sell.
Around 2014, Tesla entered China, bringing its first Superchargers with it. In 2018, NIO built its first battery swap station, enshrining "swappable and chargeable" as a user benefit.
At this stage, charging was merely a basic supporting facility for vehicle sales.
As Yang Xi explains, the goal at the time was to "avoid the embarrassment of selling cars." Charging was a cost center, not a business.
The second shift occurred around 2025.
Ultra-fast charging technology matured rapidly: BYD's second-generation Blade battery slashed charging times to under nine minutes, driving its "Flash Charge China" initiative. BYD's 10,000th flash charging station was completed in August 2026, reaching 12,165 by October. The year-end target is 20,000, with another 6,000 planned overseas. Meanwhile, Tesla's Supercharger network in China surpassed 2,500 stations, opening more than 950 to non-Tesla owners.
At this stage, charging began to serve a new function: boosting owner loyalty and feeding back into vehicle sales.
Notably, owners of other brands make up nearly one-third of BYD's flash charging users.
Image Source: Tesla
Yang Xi's analysis suggests that the brand binding effect for plug-in charging is relatively weak: owners won't refuse to use a station just because the brand doesn't match their car. That doesn't mean the network lacks value. Tesla's Supercharger system has long been viewed as a brand moat, and BYD's 10,000-station flash charging network is similarly building user stickiness.
The third shift is happening in 2026.
Geely and NIO used equity to tie up their battery swap assets, targeting 10,000 swap stations and an annual power demand exceeding 10 billion kWh by 2030. Yinwang partnered with CATL and Contemporary Amperex EV Service to integrate Qiankun autonomous driving into the Chocolate swap network. CATL, meanwhile, is equipping all its swap stations with ultra-fast chargers, attempting to define the standards for both swapping and charging.
For the first time, charging has become a strategic asset fought over by automakers and supply chain giants.
Image Source: ZEEKR
Behind this shift lies a repeatedly verified figure: charging anxiety accounts for about one-third of the decision-making weight for consumers switching from gas to electric. Whether domestic electrification penetration exceeds 80% depends directly on the coverage and service capacity of charging infrastructure.
Therefore, the charging network is effectively a function of sales volume. That explains why automakers are willing to invest billions in a business that remains unprofitable in the short term.
Tesla's investment trajectory confirms this. Since entering China in 2013, the company has never stopped pouring money into charging. As of March 2026, its domestic Supercharger stations surpassed 2,500, with over 12,000 stalls. Just this year, it launched 55 highway service area stations in Chongqing in a single go, adding 212 V4 Superchargers.
From "sales accessory" to "differentiated service" and now to "strategic positioning," the role of charging in the automaker's arsenal is being upgraded.
So, what exactly are automakers paying for?
Why Automakers Are Piling Into Charging
Yang Xi identifies four main drivers behind this push.
First is brand positioning. Automakers want to project an image as "energy service providers." The charging network is one of the few assets that can simultaneously carry the dual promise of "technology" and "service." Tesla's Superchargers and NIO's battery swap system are, at their core, serving the brand narrative.
Second is alleviating purchase anxiety. As noted, charging anxiety accounts for about one-third of the decision-making process for those switching from gas to electric. Domestically, whether electrification penetration exceeds 80% depends on infrastructure coverage and service capability. BYD, for instance, launched "Dream Stations": if enough owners in a designated area apply, the brand will build a station there. At the 10,000-station milestone, 4,228 Dream Stations had been built, backed by 74,281 user applications.
Third is supporting the capital market narrative. For listed automakers, charging offers ready-made material for a "second growth curve." When vehicle sales are under pressure, there is still the story of energy services, battery assets, and power trading to tell. This narrative directly supports capital market expectations for "business diversification."
Fourth is finding new user touchpoints. Vehicle sales and standardized services are nearing saturation, but charging remains one of the few scenarios where new connections can be built. A detail from the Geely-NIO partnership illustrates this: NIO President Qin Lihong calculated that by relying on the swap network, a commercial vehicle can save up to 90 minutes a day — boosting operating revenue by 15% to 20%.
Image Source: NIO
In terms of strategy, automakers have largely adopted three models. BYD, Tesla, and Li Auto choose to build their own networks, funding them independently and retaining control over service. Xiaomi partners with third-party charging providers to offer exclusive benefits without bearing heavy asset costs. XPENG uses a hybrid model of limited self-building combined with third-party partnerships to balance cost and coverage.
The new development in 2026 is that these paths are starting to merge. The Geely-NIO cross-shareholding, for example, essentially uses equity to integrate two networks and two standards into one.
The boundaries between the three paths are loosening. Tesla, which has the heaviest self-built network, has opened nearly 40% of its Superchargers to the industry, offering time-of-use rates and parking discounts to non-Tesla owners. BYD is co-building its flash charging ecosystem with Sinopec, PetroChina, Shell, and TELD, offloading heavy assets to partners while retaining control of technology and traffic entry points.
Yet behind these strategic choices lies a fundamental difference in the competitive logic of the two charging methods.
As the industry insider noted, battery swap technology is highly exclusive. Battery pack standards, swap structures, and user ecosystems are all built on a single technical architecture. The certainty that "once you're in, you get a piece of the pie" is the core reason NIO, CATL, and Yinwang continue to double down on swapping.
The barriers for charging networks operate on a different level. Tesla's Supercharger system has long been seen as a brand moat, and BYD's 10,000-station flash network is also locking in user loyalty. The difference is this: the barrier for swapping is exclusivity at the technical standard level, while the barrier for charging is stickiness driven by network density and user experience.
Notably, swapping and ultra-fast charging are expected to coexist in the long term rather than replace each other.
Yang Xi emphasizes that NIO has already completed the market education for swapping and established a fixed user base, achieving fast replenishment just like megawatt-level charging. Both technological routes support grid scheduling and energy trading in the same way, ultimately pointing to a single goal: making EV charging as fast and cheap as refueling.
This means automakers won't bet their charging investments on a single technological path.
Denser Networks, Set Standards: When Will the Profit Model Work?
However, the expansion of charging networks doesn't mean the business model is viable yet.
According to Yang Xi, the entire industry is still in the infrastructure investment phase. Players are prioritizing network coverage, and the exploration of commercial profit models has not truly begun. At least three questions loom over the industry.
Image Source: Li Auto
First, the ecosystem has not taken shape, and the profit model is still being explored.
The biggest cost for swap stations isn't the initial construction, but later operations, maintenance, and electricity. Each station has a clear break-even point, but it requires enough traffic to fill it. The same applies to charging networks. Reportedly, a single stall at a BYD flash charging station delivers 2,983 kWh per day — but that figure is the result of spreading costs across a 10,000-station network.
The industry insider believes a mature charging business ecosystem will take a long time to form. Currently, players are all "trading scale for time," betting that network density will eventually support a profitable model.
Second, the battle over standards has reached a fever pitch.
Standardization is the biggest bottleneck for scaling battery swapping. Before the Geely-NIO partnership, the two companies operated on entirely different standards. In this collaboration, Geely chose to build a unified consumer-end swapping technology and standard with NIO, rather than insisting on its own.
NIO's swapping standard is relatively mature; the company previously led the drafting of National Energy Administration standards such as "General Technical Requirements for Fast Replacement Battery Pack Locking Mechanisms" and "General Technical Requirements for Fast Replacement Battery Pack Cooling Interfaces." CATL, meanwhile, is using its "Super-Swap Shared Network" to pull automakers into its "Chocolate" standard, aiming to build over 100,000 shared facilities by the end of 2028.
Once a standard is established, it means long-term rule-making power.
Third is the dilemma of balancing open and closed systems.
Self-built networks are closed and controllable, but they are expensive and suffer from limited utilization. Open sharing is efficient, but makes it hard to differentiate.
Tesla has opened nearly 40% of its Superchargers to the industry, and nearly one-third of BYD's 1.83 million flash charging users own other brands — clear evidence that openness is becoming the trend.
Yet for automakers that have poured billions into building these networks, the struggle of "failing to close the loop after opening" persists.
Yang Xi also raises a longer-term question: once flash charging is ubiquitous and charging times drop to around 10 minutes, will the business revert to the traditional gas station model? The industry has yet to reach a consensus.
Until now, there has been a less-discussed direction for charging: overseas markets.
Yang Xi observes that for Chinese automakers, the current push into overseas charging is fundamentally "passive support." Local infrastructure abroad is progressing slowly, and without building stations, it is hard to alleviate purchase concerns among local users. There is no replicable path for overseas markets either: power supply, engineering qualifications, and fire safety regulations vary by country.
In Europe, for instance, Spain's power grid lacks redundant capacity, so charging stations must rely on off-peak energy storage at night. In South America, Brazil's policy supports charging construction, leading to faster deployment than in Europe. In the Middle East, market-based energy trading is explicitly prohibited, meaning charging networks can only be led by state entities.
These differences dictate that automakers going global must calculate their charging investments on a country-by-country basis.
In summary, the logic behind automakers' charging layouts has shifted markedly: from a supporting cost to "avoid the embarrassment of selling cars," to a user lever for "differentiated service," and now to "strategic positioning" in 2026. Charging has evolved from a cost item to a strategic imperative.
But the race is far from over.
Who builds the denser network, whose standard is adopted by more automakers, and who cracks the profit model first will determine the final landscape of this charging battle.
