$NIO Inc (NIO.US)$ CATL wants to unify the battery swapping market, but how will they solve the following issues?
1. Standardization of chassis specifications and technology: To use CATL's battery swap stations, vehicles must be equipped with CATL batteries and have identical chassis packaging, including bolts, right? According to Nio, they even developed special bolts to ensure batteries can be repeatedly installed without loosening. Will other automakers agree to this standardization?
2. Tesla and BYD have their own batteries, so they likely won’t use CATL's battery swap stations, right?
3. Establishing battery swap stations falls under regional operations, but CATL is primarily a manufacturing company—its offline operational capabilities remain unproven. For example, Nio uses actual user travel data as a reference to determine the priority of locations. Plus, they have local teams in each city familiar with the geography. Is CATL going to blindly build stations? That’s unlikely, so how will they address this issue?
Personally, I think it won't be easy for CATL to run battery swap stations.