Geely plans to set up 5,000 battery swapping stations by 2025

From the makers of mild hybrids like the Okavango and the Azkarra, comes a promise or rather a large-scale goal that’ll see Geely Holding’s subsidiary company, Geely Technology Group, make its newly showcased battery swapping technology applied and widespread. 

About the technology and service, Geely calls it E-Energee. The program was unveiled at the 2021 Wuzhen Internet Conference, and the brand provided details as well as the future layout of its service. 

According to the brand, the Geely Technolgy Group began working on the project back in 2017, and it has since grown its research and development team to over a thousand people. Geely has also registered hundreds of patents in the process of developing the operating service and also for the development of the battery swap vehicle architectures. 

Geely’s first-ever battery-swapping station from the E-Energee program popped up in September 2020, and after a year’s time, the company has since expanded into ten Chinese provinces. The brand’s goal is to put up 5,000 stations online across China by the year 2025. 

The problem that quite a few consumers or would-be customers for electric vehicles (EVs) is the range anxiety and the significant downtime while charging. Unlike filling up a car’s fuel tank, E-Energee’s proposition could see EVs with the system receive a full charge in just 59 seconds, or so Geely claims. 

Through an automatic registration payment service, users wil be able to drive into the station to automatically swap their battery out for a fully charged one without having to exit the vehicle. The current E-Energee service is used by mobility fleets with EVs for greater efficiency through the use of battery swap in order to keep the vehicles productive and on the road longer. 

Again, Geely is aiming to have 5,000 swapping stations by 2025, and the electrification process of the automotive industry is in full swing. It will be a matter of time before EVs become widespread and consumer demands from these types of vehicles will outpace the range and charging time of certain models. Geely’s solution is very similar to a gas station’s, in which it takes all but a moment to top up and be ready to go.