CATL Links 3,000-Station Swap Network to Sodium-Ion Push

CATL wants more than 3,000 passenger car battery-swap stations operating across China by the end of this year, and chairman Robin Zeng says that network is the key to accelerating sodium-ion battery adoption in passenger vehicles.

Speaking at a Benchmark Mineral Intelligence event in Shanghai, Zeng said sodium-ion packs (batteries using sodium rather than lithium as the charge carrier) already deliver sufficient range for daily urban driving. Swap stations close the remaining gap for weekend trips, where drivers worry about running out of charge, Bloomberg reported.

"We are building battery-swapping stations on our own, leasing batteries to the consumers," Zeng said. "We need to build more swapping stations on the highways and in the cities."

How big is the network today?

CATL swap stations already cover about 200 Chinese cities, Zeng said. The year-end target of more than 3,000 passenger car stations represents a sharp step-up from the 1,020 Choco-Swap stations across 45 cities the company reported in December 2025.

Swapping lets drivers exchange a depleted pack for a fully charged one within minutes, an alternative to conventional charging that sidesteps both charging time and range limits of lower-energy-density chemistries.

What does this change for sodium-ion adoption?

Sodium-ion's weakness is energy density — the amount of energy a cell stores per kilogram — which directly limits driving range. Zeng's argument is that infrastructure, not cell chemistry, can close that gap: if a driver can swap packs on a highway, a pack sized for city driving becomes acceptable.

The supporting numbers come from CATL's own disclosures. The company launched its Naxtra sodium-ion brand in April 2025 and unveiled a passenger vehicle equipped with the battery together with Changan Automobile in February. CATL said the vehicle's cells reach an energy density of up to 175 Wh/kg and deliver a range of more than 400 kilometers (249 miles).

Cold-weather performance strengthens the case. The battery retains more than 90% of its capacity at minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit), according to CATL's February information — a threshold where lithium-ion packs typically lose significantly more usable range.

Scale expectations and the lithium hedge

CATL previously said it expects 10,000 to 20,000 electric vehicles to use its sodium-ion batteries this year — a modest volume against its overall cell output, but a commercial beachhead for the chemistry.

The company also frames sodium-ion as a risk management tool: it reduces CATL's exposure to sharp swings in lithium prices, since sodium supply is cheaper and more widely available. For battery buyers, that hedging logic matters as much as the technical specs.

Deployment timing is set. CATL's subsidiary Contemporary Amperex Energy Service Technology (CAES) said in December it plans to deploy Naxtra-based sodium-ion batteries at scale across the swap network starting in 2026.

What to watch next

Watch the year-end count against the 3,000-station target, and the share of swap stations stocking sodium-ion packs as the 2026 CAES deployment begins. The Changan vehicle's real-world uptake this year — against the 10,000-to-20,000 unit expectation — will be the first hard test of whether swapping actually converts range-anxious buyers to sodium-ion.