Key signals from the Shanghai Auto Show: China's multi-technology route crushes America's single-line thinking

A recent thought: When a big country is really enjoyable, with a large population, a big market, and abundant resources, you can do anything and say "I want it all."

This month, there are many hot topics in the domestic economic field, aside from tariffs.

At the Canton Fair, which opened on April 15, the number of foreign buyers who pre-registered for the exhibition exceeded 200,000, leading to a surge in hotel prices across Guangzhou. I know this because I happened to be in Guangzhou that week, and some hotel prices even doubled. The hotel I stayed in also had foreign guests.

Additionally, the Shanghai Auto Show opened on April 23, with nearly 1,000 companies exhibiting globally, and the number of new cars released exceeded 100.

A noticeable change at this year's auto show is that car companies are more focused on showcasing their technological capabilities, overshadowing the previously popular influencer marketing.

We also see that although this auto show is not specifically for foreigners and mainly targets the domestic market, with most texts in Chinese, it still attracted a large number of overseas visitors, indicating a trend for China's auto shows to become a global center.

These overseas attendees who specifically came to the auto show are not very interested in various domestic marketing strategies; instead, they are more focused on the real technological changes of Chinese car companies.

For example, a staff member from Nio interviewed by the media mentioned that over 28,000 people visited the Nio booth on the first day of the auto show. "At least 30% were foreigners." Many of them were automotive agents from various countries, and representatives from countries like Singapore and Israel signed contracts on-site.

In the image below, this blogger visiting Nio's flagship ET9, has over 20 million followers on his Supercar Blondie account on YouTube.

Honestly, I have watched some overseas automotive bloggers' channels, and I feel that some of them hold certain biases and negative attitudes towards China. However, as automotive bloggers, regardless of whether you like China or not, you have to come to China to see the latest trends in automotive technology development.

Interestingly, many overseas visitors are very interested in the battery swapping and charging routes, and Nio is a leading company in the battery swapping route. Therefore, many European and American journalists went directly to the Nio booth to observe the battery swapping process, vehicle positioning, and details of battery pack replacement.

Today, I want to discuss the issue of technological routes.

I believe that when looking at competition between countries, it is not about short-term games, but ultimately about the speed of long-term technological progress. The reason why global competition ultimately unfolds between major powers is that the advantage of major powers is the ability to simultaneously choose different technological routes for investment. Even if some of these routes ultimately fail, it does not hinder their leading position.

Comparing the current industrial situations of China and the United States, I believe China has a greater advantage in this regard.

In the global industrial development, there has always been a competition of different technological routes. If an industry does not have a technological route competition, it would seem abnormal Companies that have bet on the wrong technological route, or those that have failed to keep up with changes in technology, have either disappeared or fallen from grace.

If an industry or company is crucial to a country or region, then a wrong choice in technological direction can even affect the fate of the nation.

For example, in China, there were companies pursuing both plasma panel technology and LCD television technology.

A typical case is Changhong, which announced in 2007 an investment of $675 million to build China's first plasma panel production line, achieving full-scale production in 2010. However, the market share of plasma screen televisions in China fell below 2% by 2014, leading to the failure of Changhong's plasma technology route, and it exited plasma panel manufacturing in 2014, selling the business for only 64.2 million yuan.

Changhong is also the largest home appliance and electronics company in Sichuan Province, and its decline directly resulted in Sichuan losing a company that could rank among the top tier in the domestic electronics and home appliance sector.

However, for the whole of China, this was not a significant issue, as during these years, companies like TCL (under Huaxing Optoelectronics) and BOE made substantial investments in LCD panel production lines. Both have now become global giants in the LCD panel industry, and I checked that in 2024, their shipment volumes ranked them among the top two in the world.

Similarly, the United States has had its share of similar situations. As mentioned earlier, smartphone operating systems like Android, Windows Phone, and iOS are all American. Even though Microsoft's Windows Phone ultimately failed and exited the market, the U.S. remains a global leader in this area.

In the automotive sector, although electric vehicles have become mainstream, China is still actively pursuing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Sinopec is a major player in the domestic hydrogen energy strategy, and by the end of 2024, China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) had built over 140 hydrogen refueling stations, becoming the world's largest operator of hydrogen refueling stations.

The following image shows the hydrogen fuel cell supply center expansion project of Sinopec Guangzhou Petrochemical, which was put into operation in March this year. It can produce 15 tons of hydrogen per day with a purity of 99.999%, with an annual production capacity of 5,100 tons, making it the largest hydrogen fuel cell supply center in South China.

Another typical example is the parallel development of battery swapping technology and charging technology for electric vehicles.

Nio is a representative case, being one of the most committed Chinese automakers to electric vehicle energy replenishment. While Nio is well-known for its battery swapping technology, it actually has the most charging stations among all domestic automakers. As of April 3, 2025, Nio has established 4,485 charging stations and 25,980 charging piles nationwide, with 80% of its charging network's electricity sourced from non-Nio brand new energy vehicle users In the battery swapping field, Nio has insisted on pursuing the battery swapping route for many years, despite facing continuous skepticism about this approach. However, Nio has been continuously building battery swapping stations, and by April 3, 2025, the number of Nio's battery swapping stations reached 3,243.

Moreover, Nio has welcomed major players to join forces in promoting battery swapping.

On March 17, the world's largest power battery manufacturer, CATL, and Nio reached a strategic cooperation agreement. The two parties will jointly create the world's largest battery swapping network for passenger vehicles and promote the formulation and implementation of national standards for battery swapping technology.

The official announcement of this cooperation may sound complicated, so let's simplify it:

1: Last year, CATL announced its plan to build 1,000 battery swapping stations by 2025, ultimately aiming to establish 30,000 battery swapping stations.

Therefore, we can consider that CATL is very determined to pursue the battery swapping route, and the planned investment is substantial.

On the other hand, Nio is accelerating the pace of advancing the battery swapping route. As of April 3, among Nio's 3,243 battery swapping stations, 570 will be launched within six months in the second half of 2024.

This is a collaboration between two manufacturers genuinely investing in battery swapping.

2: New models developed under Nio's Firefly brand will be the first to swap batteries at CATL's battery swapping stations. The involvement of CATL is significant for Nio as it can help encourage other car manufacturers to adopt the battery swapping route, increasing the number of partners in this approach.

In fact, under the promotion of CATL, several models are already planned to be launched with battery swapping capabilities by 2025, including Changan Oushang 520, Wuling Xingguang, Wuling Bingguo, FAW Hongqi E-QM5, SAIC Roewe D7, SAIC Feifan F7, and GAC Aion AION S.

This means that battery swapping models are not exclusive to Nio but are increasingly expanding.

3: The two parties will jointly promote the establishment of a unified national standard for battery swapping. Once this standard is established, the pain point of cross-brand battery swapping may be resolved in the future.

Take charging as an example. In the past, there were no hardware and protocol specifications for electric vehicle charging interfaces. Later, after the release of the national standard for electric vehicle charging interfaces in 2015, many flaws in the 2011 version were corrected, ending the situation of different interfaces for domestic electric vehicles and achieving "unification." From then on, any brand of domestic electric vehicle could charge at any national standard charging pile.

The collaboration between the two parties, along with the potential establishment of a unified national standard for battery swapping, will greatly enhance the commercial returns of battery swapping stations. Just like the data mentioned earlier in this article, 20% of the electricity at Nio's self-built charging stations comes from Nio vehicles, providing Nio owners with a great supercharging experience, while 80% comes from non-Nio vehicles, benefiting from the unification of charging interface standards.

Once the national standard for battery swapping is established and unified, battery swapping stations can provide services for more automotive brands. Clearly, the commercial returns of battery swapping stations will significantly increase, and the commercial value of Nio and CATL, which hold a large number of battery swapping stations, will also rise accordingly. For consumers, it means that wherever there are battery swap stations, they can swap batteries without having to consider whether the station supports their vehicle model, greatly enhancing user experience, a concept currently popular in the automotive industry known as "battery swap equality."

This is indeed an interesting situation; Nio's years of promoting the battery swap route's "loneliness" is beginning to dissipate, and the involvement of CATL, the world's largest power battery manufacturer, gives a sense that Nio might be experiencing a "bitter end to a sweet beginning." It also suddenly makes me feel that in a large country like China, there seems to have been little trouble in choosing technological routes over the years, and advancing multiple technological routes simultaneously has become the norm.

In my view, battery swapping and charging technologies complement each other and jointly improve the development of China's energy infrastructure, rather than being mutually exclusive.

Each has its own scenarios and advantages.

The advantage of charging stations is their low cost; a dual-gun DC charging pile costs only tens of thousands of RMB. Just imagine setting up a few charging piles by the roadside to create a charging station. If it's an AC charging pile, it's even cheaper, costing just a few thousand RMB. In contrast, the cost of a battery swap station is evidently much higher.

Additionally, charging piles offer convenience; for example, you can park your car in your community's parking lot and charge it overnight, or charge it while shopping at a mall using the charging pile in the parking space.

Moreover, in recent years, the power of charging piles has been increasing, with various models supporting supercharging above 300 kW continuously emerging, leading to faster charging speeds and gradually improving experiences.

So, what are the advantages of the battery swap route? Why are Nio and CATL so determined to invest in it? Not only companies, but also from the news at the China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum on March 29, 2025, our country will continue to carry out pilot projects to supplement county-level charging and swapping facilities and formulate guiding opinions to promote the development of the battery swap model, stimulating new momentum in the automotive market.

From the official stance, there is also a continuous push for the development of the battery swap model.

Despite the continuous breakthroughs in high-power fast charging technology today, both at the national level and for companies like Nio and CATL, there is still a strong push for battery swap development, which actually has some common logic. Here are some of my insights and viewpoints:

1: The battery swap route can alleviate the conflict between high-power fast charging and the power grid, achieving energy replenishment in a few minutes while reducing the impact on China's power grid.

Electric vehicles pose a significant challenge to our country's power grid; consumers need a better energy replenishment experience, which means they want it to be fast, ideally completed in a few minutes. However, this results in a very high charging power, creating a natural contradiction between enhancing the charging experience and the capacity limitations of the power grid.

Currently, a typical passenger car has a battery capacity of 100 kWh, which is quite normal.

In the future, with the emergence of the next generation of high-density battery technology, the range of pure electric vehicles will continue to increase, and it will certainly reach over 1,000 kilometers, or even longer, such as 1,500 kilometers. At that time, a single vehicle's battery capacity may reach 200 kWh.

Let's do a simple math problem: there are 353 million cars in China. Conservatively, if 60% of them become electric in the future, that would be about 200 million electric vehicles To achieve fast charging speeds, high power is essential. However, the load on the power grid cannot handle excessive power, so we shouldn't calculate too high; let's consider 200 kW. If at the same time only 10%, which is 20 million vehicles, are charging,

then we need 20 million * 200 kW = 4 billion kW of power. It is important to note that by the end of 2024, the total installed power generation capacity in our country will only be 3.35 billion kW, which is actually higher than the total national power capacity.

A charging speed of 200 kW is not particularly fast, as the supercharging stations on the market often exceed 300-400 kW or even more. Considering the long-tail effect of charging at 200 kW, it would take about half an hour for a 100 kWh battery, and if it’s a 200 kWh battery, it would take an hour.

Moreover, it is impossible to allocate all the national power capacity to electric vehicles; industries, agriculture, commerce, and households also need electricity. Therefore, even if we only consider the charging experience at 200 kW,

the expansion needed for the power grid would be exponential. Additionally, if we really want to achieve a refueling experience similar to that of gasoline vehicles within five minutes, a charging speed of 200 kW per vehicle is insufficient; the power would need to be significantly increased.

While the demand for power grid capacity increases several times, the increase in electric vehicle charging volume is very limited, around 10%-20%.

Currently, a passenger electric vehicle can travel 5-10 kilometers on one kilowatt-hour. Let's assume an electric vehicle charges about 3,000 kWh per year (corresponding to 15,000-30,000 kilometers per year).

Even if all 353 million vehicles in the country were fully electrified, the annual electricity consumption would be about 1 trillion kWh, which is roughly 10% of last year's total national electricity consumption. Even considering that some of these vehicles are buses, taxis, ride-hailing cars, and heavy trucks, even if the total electricity consumption doubles, it would only account for 20%.

This means that even with 100% electrification, the national electricity consumption would only increase by about 10-20%. However, to achieve fast charging speeds for electric vehicles, the national power grid capacity would need to be expanded several times, which is clearly not cost-effective.

The emergence of battery swapping routes can easily elevate the energy replenishment speed to a minute-level.

Moreover, since the batteries at the swapping stations can be charged during off-peak hours at night, they can quickly swap batteries for vehicles during the day. This reduces the need for power grid capacity expansion and provides a better user experience, allowing replenishment to be completed in as little as 3 minutes.

2: Additionally, I want to mention something that may be even more important, which is the development of battery swapping technology in China, which is crucial for the international expansion of China's electric vehicle industry.

China has the best power grid in the world, but this is not the case in other countries. Even in developed countries like the US, Japan, and Europe,

implementing high-power supercharging at hundreds of kilowatts is much more challenging than in China. The reason is that their work efficiency and annual power grid expansion scale are far inferior to that of China. In developed countries, if you build a charging station and find that the power capacity is insufficient and want to apply for an expansion of several hundred kilowatts, it is normal for the application process to take several years Therefore, even in developed countries, charging speeds of several tens of kilowatts are mainstream now, and charging times are measured in hours.

At this Shanghai Auto Show, the leading British tech media Fully Charged Show, which has 1.1 million followers on YouTube, had a brief conversation with Li Bin at the NIO booth. Li Bin showcased the "Dance of the Sky" capability of the ET9 car to demonstrate NIO's integrated capabilities of intelligent chassis + operating system + self-adjusting suspension.

However, this leading media outlet emphasized "we love battery swapping," and mentioned that "people in Europe are really excited about battery swapping." They noted that many European consumers prefer battery swapping, showing greater interest in this approach.

Li Bin also responded that NIO now has 60 battery swapping stations in Europe.

To add, Li Bin emphasized the demonstration of the ET9 because it is NIO's flagship model. At the auto show, former Volkswagen CEO Diess also experienced the NIO ET9, calling it "the most sophisticated model from China," believing that its steer-by-wire and fully active suspension redefine the driving experience and overturn traditional norms. He stated that NIO should bring the ET9 to the European market, claiming "this will definitely impact the flagship market dominated by German brands like Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche, and Audi."

In developed countries, the situation is similar, but in developing countries, the power grid is even worse. Not only is it unstable, but the grid capacity is also far from sufficient. Many charging stations in developing countries only have one or two hundred kilowatts of power available, making it impossible to popularize supercharging. Aside from a few stations with abundant electricity, the way to enhance charging speed must be through battery swapping.

Therefore, if NIO and CATL can explore the construction of battery swapping technology routes domestically and achieve a unified standard in China, it will greatly assist their future overseas expansion.

3: Battery swapping stations can also serve as distributed energy storage systems to peak shave the grid during high load periods.

In other words, the energy storage systems that CATL has been developing can actually be the same as the battery swapping stations that NIO has been working on, just with different uses. It is no wonder that the two companies can collaborate so well.

In recent years, V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid) technology has been continuously moving from concept to practicality. The theory is that during peak electricity load times, vehicle owners can choose to discharge back to the grid to reduce peak load.

The specific method is to allow vehicle owners to choose whether to discharge back through an app, and how much they can earn.

However, compared to the tens of kilowatt-hours of a single vehicle's battery, a battery swapping station can serve as a large energy storage system, capable of reaching 1,000 kilowatt-hours, several thousand kilowatt-hours, or even more.

This provides greater regulation capability for the power grid At the China Electric Vehicle Hundred People Meeting on March 29, Li Bin stated that in 2024, Nio will have eight or nine hundred battery swap stations participating in peak shaving and frequency regulation of the power grid, providing emergency response.

On March 11, 2025, Suzhou launched a virtual power plant with a regulation capacity of 20,000 kilowatts. As long as the power grid issues a regulation command, the 68 aggregated battery swap stations can respond within seconds and participate in vehicle-grid interaction.

This means that battery swap stations can be seen as serving both electric vehicles and the power grid, thereby improving the efficiency of energy storage utilization.

Moreover, since multiple battery swap stations can be aggregated, each individual battery swap station can dynamically adjust how many batteries can participate in grid peak shaving and how many batteries are used to provide energy replenishment for vehicle owners.

Furthermore, just as oil and natural gas have strategic reserves, electricity as an energy source can also be reserved for emergencies. The nationwide network of battery swap stations can be viewed as a significant strategic reserve of electricity.

Thus, battery swap stations are of great significance for the stability and safety of China's entire power grid.

Why am I confident about the future industrial development in China?

First, the enormous scale of manufacturing. Take the Shanghai Auto Show as an example, where over a hundred new cars were launched at once. Intense competition will lead to the emergence of more outstanding companies, and various technological advancements will occur rapidly.

Second, the advancement of multiple technological routes.

For instance, in the development of charging and battery swapping, both routes are being promoted in China, with strong companies in both camps. The construction results of both technological routes—charging stations and battery swap stations—are rapidly increasing.

Now let's look across the ocean at the lighthouse country, the United States. They have essentially chosen one route, which is the charging route, followed by Tesla, which has developed its own charging piles.

In terms of the construction of battery swap station technology routes, the U.S. lacks giants like Nio and CATL investing in this area, and the government's attention is far less than that of China. In contrast, Nio's battery swap stations have already achieved county-level coverage in the most developed regions of Zhejiang and Jiangsu.

Currently, there are only a few small startups in the U.S. working on battery swap stations, and they have not formed a scale.

This represents the situation of China's dual-route advancement versus the U.S.'s single-route approach.

In fact, this is not only the case for the energy replenishment model of electric vehicles; the comparison between China and the U.S. in other industries is similar.

Take the shipbuilding industry as an example. China is currently advancing in LNG ships, cruise ships, and aircraft carriers, while the U.S. shipbuilding industry is only focused on aircraft carriers.

The comprehensive technological advancement benefits from China's large population scale and relatively favorable age structure. However, in the future, it will be limited by the declining population and aging. Therefore, during the golden period of a billion-level population, we must strive to push the country's and industries' development to greater heights.

Only in this way can we fully utilize the benefits brought by comprehensive technological advancement and maintain our advantages in the future.

Risk Warning and Disclaimer

The market has risks, and investment requires caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice and does not take into account the specific investment goals, financial conditions, or needs of individual users. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article align with their specific circumstances Invest based on this, and you bear the responsibility