Geely to take 30% stake in Nio's battery-swapping unit in $2.4 billion deal

Nio and Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, two of China's largest electric vehicle makers, said on September 28 that they had signed definitive agreements to cross-invest in each other's charging and battery-swapping businesses, the latest sign that rival Chinese automakers are consolidating capital-intensive infrastructure rather than building duplicate networks. Under the deal, disclosed in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, a Geely subsidiary will acquire a 30 percent stake in Nio Power, Nio's battery-swap and charging arm, while Nio takes a 10 percent stake in Geely's own charging business.

The transaction folds Geely's commercial-fleet battery-swap operator, Yiyi Internet Technology, known as Yiyi Power, into Nio Power. In exchange for handing over 100 percent of Yiyi Power plus RMB 640 million (about $95 million) in cash, Geely's subsidiary receives newly issued equity valuing Nio Power at roughly RMB 16 billion, or about $2.2 billion to $2.4 billion depending on the exchange rate used, on a post-money basis.

How the ownership splits

Nio, through its Chinese operating entity, will retain control of Nio Power with a 63.6 percent stake after the deal closes. Geely's subsidiary takes 30 percent, and an existing investor, the Wuhan Guangchuang Emerging Technology Phase I venture fund, holds the remaining 6.4 percent. Geely's stake is tied to operational milestones and can fall no lower than 20 percent if targets are missed; the company also has an option to invest a further RMB 640 million within two years, which would lift its holding to 34 percent while trimming Nio's stake to 60 percent.

In the reverse transaction, Nio's China entity is subscribing for a 10 percent stake in Geely's charging subsidiary, Zhejiang Haohan Energy Technology, using proceeds from selling certain charging assets to Geely. According to Geely's own announcement of the partnership, the companies also outlined a preliminary framework to develop unified battery-swap standards for consumer vehicles, with Geely expected to design swappable models that could plug into Nio's existing network.

From rivals to reluctant partners

Nio pioneered battery swapping in China as an alternative to plug-in charging, arguing drivers could exchange a depleted battery for a charged one in minutes rather than waiting to charge. The approach has been expensive to scale: Nio has spent more than RMB 20 billion building out the network, according to the company, and as of September 27 operated 9,433 stations nationwide, including 4,126 swap stations and 5,307 charging stations with more than 30,000 charging piles, together handling upward of 220 million services. The company has said it wants 10,000 swap stations running by 2030.

To spread that cost, Nio has spent the past two years recruiting rival automakers and suppliers into a shared-standards consortium, including Changan, Chery, JAC, GAC, FAW and Lotus, along with battery maker CATL, which agreed in March 2025 to invest up to RMB 2.5 billion in Nio Power. Monday's deal with Geely — a company that has separately built its own charging footprint of roughly 2,500 stations across 232 cities, with plans for more than 22,000 stations and 100,000 connectors by the end of 2027 — marks the shift from a technical-standards partnership first struck in 2023 into full business integration, combining balance sheets as well as engineering.

"Recharging networks are public infrastructure that serve society as a whole. They should be built together, shared openly, and connected across networks," Geely Holding chief executive Andy An Conghui said in the companies' joint announcement.

Who is affected

For Nio, the deal brings in outside capital and a large commercial-fleet customer base for a business it has struggled to fund on its own, while letting it keep operational control. Nio's second-quarter results filed with the SEC showed the company narrowed its net loss by 89.4 percent year on year to roughly RMB 0.5 billion, on revenue up 69 percent to $4.74 billion and deliveries of 107,658 vehicles across its Nio, Onvo and Firefly brands, with cash reserves of RMB 56.7 billion. Offloading part of the swap-network build-out to a partner reduces the capital burden as Nio tries to sustain that improvement.

For Geely, the tie-up gives its commercial and consumer vehicles access to a far larger swap network than it could build alone, and a foothold in a technology it has watched Nio champion for nearly a decade. Fleet operators, taxi and ride-hailing drivers who rely on Yiyi Power's commercial swap stations are the most immediate group affected, as that business is absorbed into Nio's larger network. Consumers with existing Nio vehicles should see no immediate change to service, though the eventual arrival of Geely-branded swappable models would extend the network's use case beyond Nio's own lineup.

Market reaction

Nio's US-listed shares rose about 3 percent in Monday's session on the announcement, according to reporting on the deal terms, but gave back those gains and more overnight heading into Tuesday amid broader selling pressure, part of a stretch that has left the stock down roughly 13 percent for the month and on pace for a fifth consecutive monthly decline. Nio founder and chief executive William Li framed the deal as part of a broader industry reckoning over wasted investment. "The industry needs not only to keep innovating, but also to become more efficient at turning innovation into value," Li said in the companies' announcement, adding separately that automakers needed to address "how to converge, reduce duplicated investment and waste, and raise each company's efficiency" as competing charging and swap networks have proliferated across China.

What happens next

The transaction is structured as definitive agreements rather than a completed sale, meaning it still requires the customary regulatory and closing steps standard for Chinese corporate transactions of this size before Geely's stake and Nio's reciprocal holding formally change hands. Coverage of the broader charging-infrastructure buildout, including from industry outlets tracking the deal, notes that the companies still need to negotiate the details of shared technical standards before Geely can begin selling battery-swappable consumer vehicles compatible with Nio's stations. Nio is also due to report third-quarter delivery figures in the coming weeks, a number investors will watch for signs of whether narrowing losses and infrastructure partnerships like this one are translating into steadier volume growth.