China-based battery manufacturer CATL (宁德时代) and British energy technology company Octopus Energy have formed a joint venture to deploy a battery-swapping network for electric heavy goods vehicles (eHGVs) across Europe, marking the first attempt to transplant China's commercially proven battery-swapping infrastructure model into the European commercial transport sector.
The partnership was unveiled on June 22 at the Energy Tech Summit in London. Under the agreement, the two companies will construct "mega-hubs"—sites featuring multiple battery-exchange stations—each capable of serving thousands of electric trucks daily. The first hubs are scheduled to open in the United Kingdom in 2027, with more than 30 sites planned across Europe by 2035. Once fully operational, the network aims to support over 300,000 electric HGVs and unlock GBP 30 billion (approximately US$38 billion) in private investment.
CATL's battery-swapping system enables electric trucks to exchange depleted batteries in approximately five minutes—a time shorter than refueling a diesel truck—according to Oscar Luo (罗欧), Head of Overseas Investment at CATL. The system handles batteries with capacities exceeding 500 kWh, addressing the range and downtime constraints that have long hindered the electrification of long-haul freight. Standardized modules are swapped under the vehicle chassis, allowing hauliers to select the number of packs based on route and load requirements.
The venture draws on operational experience from CATL's subsidiary Qiji Energy (骐骥换电), which had established 305 heavy-truck battery-swapping stations across 13 core regions in China by the end of 2025. Octopus Energy contribute its AI-powered Kraken platform, which supports more than 73 million customer accounts and will enable swapping hubs to function as distributed energy storage—charging or discharging batteries in response to grid demand. "Instead of waiting for hours, trucks can be back on the road in minutes," said Greg Jackson, CEO and founder of Octopus Energy Group.
Swaptopus arrives at a pivotal moment for European road freight decarbonization. Heavy-duty trucks account for approximately 25% of road transport CO2 emissions in the European Union despite representing only about 5% of the vehicle fleet. The EU's increasingly stringent emissions regulations—including CO2 reduction targets of 45% by 2030 and 90% by 2040 for new heavy-duty vehicles—are compelling fleet operators to accelerate electrification, yet the charging infrastructure gap remains a structural obstacle. A typical megawatt-class charging session for a heavy truck takes 30 to 45 minutes even at the fastest available chargers, a delay incompatible with the tight scheduling demands of long-haul logistics where every hour of downtime translates directly into revenue loss. Battery swapping eliminates this constraint entirely, offering a pathway to electrification that preserves the operational tempo of diesel-powered freight.
The economics further reinforce the case. In China, Qiji Energy's chassis battery swap technology delivers a per-kilometer cost CNY 0.62 lower than diesel trucks—annual savings of CNY 60,000 per 100,000 km—and CNY 0.20 lower than LNG-powered alternatives, with electricity prices stable and unaffected by fossil fuel volatility. For European fleet operators facing diesel costs that have fluctuated dramatically since 2022 and carbon pricing mechanisms that add incremental expense each year, the prospect of a fixed-cost, rapidly replenishable energy model carries tangible appeal. The Swaptopus model also decouples battery ownership from vehicle ownership—hauliers pay for energy access rather than carrying the capital burden of expensive battery packs, lowering the upfront purchase barrier that has slowed electric truck adoption across the continent.
From a competitive landscape perspective, battery swapping for commercial vehicles in Europe remains an essentially unoccupied field. Nio's (蔚来) passenger-car swapping network, comprising roughly 10 stations across the continent, has remained a niche experiment with no commercial freight application. European incumbents have focused investment on megawatt-charging stations and depot-based overnight charging, both of which address different segments of the market but leave the long-haul, time-sensitive corridor unaddressed. Swaptopus's declared scale—30 hubs supporting 300,000 trucks—would, if realized, constitute the first infrastructure standard for rapid freight electrification in Europe, and one defined by Chinese specifications: CATL's standardized battery block dimensions, swapping protocols, and chassis-mounting interfaces. This is a materially different proposition from the export of battery cells or the establishment of a manufacturing plant. It is the export of an infrastructure regime—one that, once embedded in operational fleet logistics, creates durable switching costs for hauliers and vehicle manufacturers alike.
The implications extend to European energy systems as well. Each mega-hub, by housing hundreds of batteries that can be charged during off-peak periods and discharged during grid stress events, functions as a decentralized storage asset. At the declared deployment scale, Swaptopus's aggregated battery inventory could represent tens of gigawatt-hours of flexible storage capacity—a resource that European grid operators increasingly need as renewable generation shares rise and fossil-fired peaking plants retire. The venture thus straddles two policy priorities simultaneously: freight decarbonization and grid resilience.