SAIC Motor announces incorporation of battery swapping joint venture

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- SAIC Motor announced on Sept. 22 via its WeChat account that a battery swapping business-focused subsidiary it jointly built with Sinopec Group, PetroChina Company Limited, CATL, and Shanghai International Automobile City has been incorporated already, marking the Shanghai-based auto giant's foray into the battery swapping domain.

The newborn company, dubbed Shanghai Jieneng Zhidian New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (“Jieneng Zhidian” is Chinese Pinyin), involves a registered capital of 4 billion yuan ($563.936 million). Focusing on the power battery rental service, it will work on the R&D and promotion of battery swapping technology, battery operation and management, big data service, etc, aiming to build a complete ecosystem of vehicle-power separation and a standardized battery swap platform.

Photo credit: SAIC Motor

According to SAIC Motor, Jieneng Zhidian will leverage Sinopec and PetroChina's country-wide networks of over 50,000 gas stations to build comprehensive energy service stations available for both EV charging and battery swapping.

The auto group said its brands like Rising Auto, Roewe, MG, and MAXUS will release battery swappable vehicle models successively to cover a wide range of segments including SUV, sedan, and MPV. Of them, Rising Auto's R7 SUV, which is about to hit the market on Sept. 27, will be the first model to adopt the battery swapping technology.