Geely Buys 30% of NIO's Battery-Swap Business for $2.4 Billion

Geely is paying about $94.8 million in cash for 30 percent of NIO's battery-swap business, which NIO's own filing values at $2.4 billion. The rest of what Geely is contributing is not cash at all: an entire company it already owns.

NIO Power operates the network where NIO drivers pull into a station and swap a depleted battery for a charged one in minutes rather than plug in. NIO said in a Form 6-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Sept. 28, 2026, that it had signed definitive agreements bringing a Zhejiang Geely Holding Group subsidiary into that business. Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive William Li said at the signing ceremony that the deal was meant to "reduce duplicate investment, and jointly build, share and connect resources for innovation," according to CnEVPost's report on the event.

What the NIO Geely battery swap deal actually pays for

Geely's contribution has two parts, according to the filing. It is handing over all of Yiyi Internet Technology, a commercial battery-swap operator it already owns, plus 640 million yuan, about $94.8 million, in cash. In exchange, Geely receives newly issued equity worth 30 percent of NIO Power once the deal closes, alongside NIO China's 63.6 percent and a 6.4 percent stake held by the Wuhan Guangchuang Emerging Technology venture fund.

Geely also holds an option to put in another 640 million yuan within two years of closing, or before NIO Power's next outside financing round, whichever comes first. Exercising it would raise Geely's stake to 34 percent and cut NIO China's share to 60 percent. NIO has not said what additional equity, beyond that stake increase, Geely would get for the second payment.

Holder	Post-closing stake	With option exercised
NIO China	63.6%	60.0%
Geely	30.0%	34.0%
Wuhan Guangchuang fund	6.4%	6.4%

The stake shrinks to a floor of 20% if targets are missed

NIO Power's ownership is not fixed at those numbers either. The filing sets a floor of 20 percent for Geely's stake, adjusted against operational milestones the companies have not disclosed publicly. A stake that can shrink by a third if performance disappoints protects Geely's downside more than it protects NIO's, since NIO keeps majority control at either end of the range.

That structure only matters if NIO Power's growth is genuinely uncertain, and the network's own numbers suggest it might be. NIO Power ran 3,790 swap stations in February 2026, according to Electrek's count at the time, and grew that to 4,126 stations by the Sept. 28 signing, according to CnEVPost, an addition of 336 stations in seven months. The network has logged more than 125 million swaps since it launched, and NIO is targeting 10,000 stations by 2030, according to CnEVPost's account of NIO's own figures. Whether Geely's milestone triggers are pegged to that 2030 target or to something nearer term is not in either company's public disclosure.

1. Feb. 20263790 stations
2. Sept. 20264126 stations

Source: Electrek (Feb. 2026 count) and CnEVPost (Sept. 28, 2026 count), accessed 2026-09-28

A parallel deal folds NIO's chargers into Geely's network

The battery-swap stake is not the only transaction NIO and Geely signed on Sept. 28. NIO China is separately acquiring a 10 percent stake in Zhejiang Haohan Energy Technology, Geely's charging subsidiary, using cash to buy some of NIO's own charging assets in return, according to the SEC filing. The two deals point the same direction: NIO's swap network absorbs a Geely-owned swap operator, and Geely's charging network absorbs NIO-owned charging assets, so each company ends up with a minority stake inside the other's infrastructure business rather than two competing networks in China.

NIO has spent more than 20 billion yuan on charging and swapping infrastructure over 11 years, according to CnEVPost's account of NIO's own figures, and the company is projecting the network could need more than 10 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year by 2030. Combining networks with a rival does not shrink that bill. It spreads the cost of building toward it across two balance sheets instead of one, the same logic behind Kempower's charger rollout at a Vancouver port, where hardware still has to get cheap enough in enough places to pay for itself. NIO and Geely are choosing to share that infrastructure cost in a market where Changan Mazda undercut its own pre-sales estimate to launch a LiDAR-equipped SUV at $21,700, a sign of how far Chinese EV pricing has already compressed.

Li frames the deal as a response to China's anti-competition campaign

Li's framing at the signing, that the deal helps "coordinate industry efforts, reduce duplicate investment" at what he called "a key issue for the next phase of high-quality development in China's auto industry," echoes the language CnEVPost's report tied to Chinese regulators' push to discourage price wars among the country's more than 100 automakers. Li said NIO and Geely's cooperation is "an open platform for the industry" and that the companies "welcome and look forward to more peers joining us," leaving open whether other automakers might buy into NIO Power on similar terms.

Neither company said whether a third automaker has been approached, and the filing sets no deadline for the option Geely holds to raise its stake to 34 percent. The variable that would change this read is which milestone triggers Geely's floor protection: a stake that only shrinks if the network stalls is a very different bet than one that shrinks if a single quarter disappoints, and NIO has disclosed the mechanism without disclosing the trigger.

Sources

1. NIO Inc. Form 6-K — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
2. NIO sells 30% of battery swap unit to Geely at more than $2 billion — Electrek
3. Nio's William Li casts Geely tie-up as effort to curb cutthroat competition through shared infrastructure — CnEVPost