Geely will pay 640 million yuan ($94.8 million) in cash plus its entire equity in battery swap operator Yiyi Power for a 30% stake in Nio Power, under a deal signed in Hangzhou on Monday that Nio founder, chairman and CEO William Li cast as an answer to China's campaign to curb cutthroat competition.

Nio China will take a 10% stake in Geely's Haohan Energy in return. The two companies also plan to jointly develop battery swap technologies and standards for passenger vehicles and expand interconnection between their charging networks.

Li, speaking at the signing ceremony in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, said the partnership would connect the charging and battery swap resources both companies have accumulated and cut duplicate investment across the industry.

"How to coordinate industry efforts, reduce duplicate investment, and jointly build, share and connect resources for innovation is a key issue for the next phase of high-quality development in China's auto industry," he said.

The infrastructure behind the deal

Nio has invested more than 20 billion yuan in charging and battery swapping over the past 11 years, Li said, and filed or secured more than 2,100 related patents. The company operates 9,433 charging and swap stations in China and has delivered more than 220 million charging and swap services.

The swap network alone counts 4,126 stations, which have completed more than 125 million swaps. Li said the network has produced substantial network effects and become a core competitive advantage in Nio's user experience. On the charging side, Nio has built 5,307 stations and provided more than 99 million charging sessions — with over 85% of the electricity dispensed serving users of brands outside Nio.

Nio brought its fifth-generation swap station online on August 7, serving its Nio, Onvo and Firefly brands. Li said the new stations can fit the body dimensions of more than 95% of passenger vehicles on the market, groundwork for serving additional brands.

What each side gains

With Geely's resources behind it, Nio Power will accelerate expansion of its swap network, Li said. He framed that support as strengthening Nio's confidence in its target of 10,000 swap stations by 2030.

Once Yiyi Power's fleet battery swap business folds into Nio Power, the unit will supply technology development, supply chains, manufacturing, construction and operations support to improve the experience for commercial fleet drivers, Li said.

Some of Nio's charging resources will move into Haohan Energy after the transaction closes. The companies will cooperate on charging technology, site resources, construction and operations to back Haohan Energy's stated goal of 22,000 charging stations by the end of 2027.

Li also positioned the swap network as energy infrastructure, not just a charging asset. Swap stations hold significant potential for grid peak shaving and frequency regulation, he said, and he expects annual electricity demand across Nio's swap network to exceed 10 billion kWh by 2030, when the commercial and social value of the stations as energy infrastructure should become increasingly apparent.

An open platform, by invitation

Li described sustained innovation as the engine behind a decade of rapid growth in China's EV industry. The next phase, he argued, demands both stronger innovation capability and greater efficiency — which requires shared infrastructure rather than duplicated builds.

He framed the equity swap explicitly as a concrete step toward curbing cutthroat competition and improving the allocation of industry resources, echoing Beijing's pressure on automakers to end price wars and redundant spending.

"Nio and Geely's cooperation in charging and battery swapping is an open platform for the industry," Li said. "We welcome and look forward to more peers joining us."

That invitation is the piece to watch. The 10,000-station target for 2030, Haohan Energy's 22,000-station goal by end-2027, and whether additional OEMs actually adopt Nio's swap standards will test whether this is consolidation or the start of a shared national infrastructure play. ($1 = 6.7489 yuan)