Two giants intensify their energy replenishment battle.

Author | Zhou Zhiyu

This year, the construction of new energy vehicle charging networks has accelerated dramatically, with the number of charging stations being updated almost monthly.

On August 28, 2026, BYD's 10,000th flash charging station was completed in Shenzhen. According to its plan, 20,000 flash charging stations will be built by the end of the year, and the number of stations will double in the next four months.

CATL's subsidiary, CATL Service, is also accelerating the construction of battery swapping stations this year. Wall Street Insights learned from sources close to CATL that after recently announcing its plan to build 100 battery swapping stations in Kunming alone, it will launch similar projects in several other cities. Its goal is to have over 3,000 battery swapping stations nationwide by the end of the year.

Besides these two new energy giants, automakers that have been building their own networks for years are still expanding. Competition in the energy replenishment network has accelerated significantly this year.

This acceleration was initially driven by the speed difference between vehicle-side and station-side charging capabilities. While 800V, high-rate batteries, and fast-charging platforms have been adopted in more vehicle models, as of the end of July this year, the average power of a single charging gun in public charging facilities nationwide was still approximately 49.97 kilowatts. The actual charging power of the same vehicle entering different stations can differ by several times. If station-side capabilities cannot keep up, it will be difficult for automakers to consistently translate the peak power figures they announce into user experience and reasons for purchasing a vehicle.

The next phase of sales growth for new energy vehicles will still depend on capturing market share from gasoline-powered vehicles. While high-voltage charging platforms reduce charging time, they only address whether vehicles can be fast-charged. Whether there is a sufficiently dense and stable charging network in urban areas, highways, and frigid regions determines whether gasoline-powered vehicle users will abandon the certainty of refueling. The automotive industry has already taken the lead, and the gaps left by the charging network are becoming the entry point for the next round of sales competition.

This is precisely where the window of opportunity lies. Once the leading networks achieve density, even if newcomers add equipment, they will still have to compete for locations, traffic flow, and vehicle type compatibility.

The recent flurry of activity from companies like BYD and CATL has brought this still-developing stage to the forefront. Securing key locations and adopting the latest vehicle models first will reduce the costs of the next round of expansion.

A battle for energy replenishment has begun, and competition in the automotive industry is extending from building a good car to organizing an energy network.

Rushing to the station is also rushing to catch the train.

According to information obtained by Wall Street Insights from BYD, its latest round of expansion has shifted towards urban infrastructure development. When BYD released its second-generation blade battery and flash charging technology on March 5, 2026, it had already built 4,239 flash charging stations. Just over five months later, that number rose to 10,000. In July and August alone, BYD added approximately 3,000 new stations.

BYD's plan for 20,000 stations includes 18,000 "station-within-a-station" stations and 2,000 high-speed flash charging stations. By the end of August, the number of high-speed stations had reached nearly 2,000, and the 2,000th station was about to be completed.

BYD's first batch of charging stations established a nationwide infrastructure. According to Wall Street Insights, BYD organized a "one-center, seven-region, hundred-regiment battle" strategy for station construction, achieving 4,239 stations from the first in just three months. The fast-charging piles, main units, energy storage, and control software were developed and manufactured internally, allowing equipment manufacturing, construction design, and vehicle launch schedules to be managed within the same organization.

BYD's own vehicles provided the initial traffic flow. Since it's difficult to recoup costs at highway, scenic, and high-altitude charging stations solely through local charging volume, BYD prioritized filling these network gaps, enabling its fast-charging vehicles to be used across cities. After the network was opened, vehicles from other brands also began to join.

These network gaps are also the most difficult scenarios to circumvent when new energy vehicles continue to replace gasoline vehicles. One of the reasons BYD rushed to build a charging station in Harbin, where the temperature is as low as -30 degrees Celsius, is to bring the goal of "charging as fast as refueling" to extremely low-temperature scenarios, directly addressing consumers' concerns about winter charging for new energy vehicles.

According to BYD, after the release of its flash charging technology, demand for charging stations quickly surged into urban areas. BYD launched the "Dream Charging Station Construction" program, which allowed four car owners to apply simultaneously if the site met the requirements, resulting in tens of thousands of applications in March alone. Of the 10,000th station completed, 4,228 were from this program. The large number of applications in core urban areas, where power supply and land are more scarce, slowed down the original construction pace.

BYD subsequently utilized existing social charging stations more extensively, entering urban areas through a "station-within-a-station" approach, and partnered with companies such as Sinopec, PetroChina, Shell, and TELD. These "station-within-a-station" facilities reuse the original stations' land, power distribution, and daily operations, while BYD brings its fast-charging equipment and existing users, reusing existing locations and some power conditions. Of the 20,000 planned stations, 18,000 adopt this method, indicating that the focus of new station additions has shifted to urban densification.

Since Era Electric Service doesn't own any vehicles, its first priority is to get automakers to adapt their models for battery swapping. Battery swapping involves more than just interface compatibility; the vehicle's chassis, battery size, and thermal management all need to be adjusted in advance. If the network is too sparse, automakers won't easily include battery swapping in their product definitions; if there aren't enough compatible models, the existing stations won't have a stable flow of traffic.

According to Wall Street Insights, Times Electric Service's strategy is "stations first, vehicles later," meaning they first establish a basic network before introducing partner vehicle models. Early stations were selected based on urban heat map distribution, and deployment was accelerated based on sales feedback from automakers. According to sales personnel from relevant automakers, many car buyers are specifically interested in battery swapping services.

The ultimate goal of Times Electric Service is to provide 3-minute service to high-density areas. With a sufficiently dense network of stations within cities, battery swapping can then be integrated into the sales process at physical stores, and automakers will have an existing network available when introducing their next compatible model.

Now, CATL is starting to connect these city nodes. Its plans for this year include covering nearly 190 cities with 4,000 "super-switch integrated stations" and laying a "12 vertical and 11 horizontal" high-speed network.

Sources close to CATL revealed that the focus of battery swapping station deployment will be on highways, and related projects will be launched soon. Compared to urban stations, highway stations will be slower to be built due to restrictions on service area locations and approval processes.

BYD already has a large and widely distributed fleet of its own vehicles, and once the highway stations are built, they can directly handle intercity traffic. In contrast, Times Electric Service's highway stations need to connect cities with existing density at both ends, and also require vehicles that can use the same standard battery. Without prior deployment of city stations and compatible vehicle models, it's difficult to create continuous traffic flow on highway routes.

NIO was among the first to deploy battery swapping stations on highways, while Li Auto and XPeng expanded their supercharging networks along with their respective high-voltage vehicle models. In this round, BYD is shifting from a nationwide backbone network to urban expansion, while Times Electric Services is moving from urban density to high-speed connectivity.

The cost of prioritizing website development

There's an unavoidable time lag in energy replenishment networks: stations must arrive before vehicles, but revenue only comes after the vehicles arrive. The more challenging the scenarios—high-speed, frigid, and remote—the more likely they are to alleviate concerns for gasoline vehicle users, the more advance the investment needs to be.

If the network is built too slowly, users won't consider fast charging or battery swapping a reliable option, and automakers won't be willing to modify their models for a sparse network; if it's built too quickly, equipment, site rentals, and battery depreciation will occur first, and traffic flow may not catch up for several years. All brands must bear this upfront cost when building their own networks, regardless of their technological approach.

Wall Street Insights learned from BYD that building stations in frigid regions increases construction difficulty. To ensure operation during winter, BYD construction workers used insulated sheds and electric blankets, shortening the original 50-day construction period to 28 days. At a station in Hefei, where geological conditions prevented further excavation, the use of prefabricated steel frames reduced the construction period for similar stations from several weeks to just a few days. Climate and geological issues can be engineered to create construction plans for future station reuse.

However, replicating this approach in core urban areas is difficult. After receiving a large number of applications in March, BYD initially thought that the construction of charging stations could continue to accelerate, but the actual pace slowed down at one point. While equipment can be mass-produced, the surplus power supply, underground pipelines, merchants, property management, and community relationships in urban areas all need to be coordinated for each station. The number of flash charging stations has increased from 4,239 to 10,000, and the bottleneck has shifted from manufacturing the equipment to obtaining a truly usable space.

The public charging industry is already showing signs of financial strain. Investments in equipment, power distribution, and site rentals are all necessary upfront. Data from the China Charging Alliance shows that the average utilization rate of public charging stations was approximately 6.2% in the fourth quarter of 2025. As of the end of July this year, 18.584 million private charging stations nationwide were handling a large volume of daily charging needs, meaning public charging stations must compete for time-sensitive traffic from long-distance drivers, ride-hailing vehicles, and logistics fleets.

These orders are concentrated in a few specific time periods. During holidays, highways require high-powered equipment to handle short-term traffic flow, while on weekdays, the same equipment may be idle for extended periods; city stations also struggle to operate at full capacity throughout the day. To ensure users can still rely on the network during congestion, operators must prepare redundancy in advance.

While charging stations in plateaus, Gobi deserts, and along some scenic routes can supplement the network, their utilization rate is difficult to compare with that of urban stations. An executive from a charging station company stated that it's difficult to recoup costs in these areas through local charging volume alone. These stations are useful for vehicle sales and the overall network, but their profitability as individual stations may remain low in the long term.

Battery swapping involves heavier assets. In addition to the site and equipment, the station also needs to prepare spare batteries; if there are not enough compatible vehicles, the batteries will depreciate in the warehouse, and too many standards will fragment the warehouse space.

CATL's 2025 annual report stated that its Chocolate battery swapping service had already achieved profitability in Chongqing.

However, whether users dare to rely on a particular power replenishment method depends on whether there are stations in their frequently visited areas, and also on whether there will be power outages when occasionally crossing cities. Even if traffic is low at edge stations, they may still be an indispensable part of the entire network.

Therefore, Times Electric Service emphasizes accounting based on cities and networks. BYD, NIO, Li Auto, and other automakers also include a portion of their network investment in vehicle sales and customer service accounts.

Site density can also produce two opposite results: building an extra site in the same area may divert orders from neighboring sites, but it can also shorten users' search and waiting time, thereby increasing vehicle sales and overall network usage. If companies only assess the profit of a single site, they may build fewer sites that ensure network integrity; if they only pursue coverage, they may tie up capital in locations with no traffic for a long time.

What's even harder for businesses to calculate is whether the sales, retention, and standard expansion brought about by new stations can cover the dilution of the utilization rate of surrounding stations.

This further raises the barrier to entry for energy replenishment networks. Ordinary operators mainly recover their investment through electricity and service fees, while automakers can profit from vehicle sales and customer retention, and battery manufacturers can also benefit from vehicle installation, leasing, and standard expansion.

The latter two types of players can tolerate a longer incubation period, but they still cannot avoid utilization. As the number of sites increases from a few thousand to tens of thousands, every piece of idle equipment, idle battery, and overestimated traffic flow will be magnified simultaneously.

The watershed of the station network

New stations are unlikely to generate profits in the short term, but leading players have accelerated their efforts this year, indicating that companies are now accounting for station network investment together with vehicle sales and loading. Once the network spans thousands or tens of thousands of stations, the evaluation criteria are no longer just about having stations, but also include who can bring in a stable flow of vehicles and who can bring in vehicle models and orders.

As driving range continues to increase, the ease of refueling will still influence users' choices of pure electric, plug-in hybrid, or range-extended electric vehicles.

This change has already reached the end consumer. An investor in a 4S dealership told Wall Street Insights that before a certain automaker released its battery-swapping version, they were actually quite apprehensive about the car's sales. However, two months after its launch, the battery-swapping version accounted for the vast majority of sales. The dense deployment of the battery-swapping network has alleviated consumers' "range anxiety" regarding battery-swapping vehicles.

NIO completed its 100 millionth battery swap in February, while Li Auto and XPeng's self-operated supercharging networks have also reached a scale of several thousand units. Self-built charging stations have transformed from vehicle-specific charging to a long-term operational business.

Roland Berger's "EV Charging Index 2026," released at the end of July 2026, shows that approximately 1.1 million new public charging points will be added globally in 2025, slightly fewer than in previous years. Mature markets are shifting their focus from network expansion to utilization, fast charging quality, and business sustainability. China is still accelerating its network construction, but the larger the network, the harder it is for utilization, equipment availability, and payback periods to be obscured by the sheer number of stations.

Users' actual choices make it difficult for a charging network to remain closed in the long run. The "2025 Electric Vehicle User Charging Behavior Research Report" released by the China Charging Alliance in July this year shows that 95.4% of users prefer DC fast charging, and 66.85% prefer charging stations with supporting services; 87% of users charge across different operators, using an average of 6 operators. Users follow location, power, price, and service, and are not fixed within a single brand system.

This flow has already appeared at BYD's new charging stations. BYD disclosed that as of the end of August, nearly one-third of the users of other brands had joined the flash charging stations; since the launch of the "Flash Charge China" strategy, the flash charging network has accumulated more than 210 million kilowatt-hours of charging volume in less than six months of operation.

Users may switch networks, but the first-mover advantage remains. Orders can flow across brands, but core locations and existing power capacity will not move with them. Of BYD's 20,000-station plan, 18,000 are "station-within-stations," meaning most of the new network will be located within existing social stations.

In this collaboration, BYD brings its own models, in-vehicle infotainment system, and charging benefits, while operators gain new vehicle traffic, and some order entry points are also brought into the in-vehicle infotainment system and brand app.

Battery swapping further extends the first-mover advantage to vehicle development. CATL disclosed at its Super Tech Day in April that its Chocolate Battery Swapping service has partnered with 11 automakers and 18 passenger vehicle brands on 25 models, forming the basis for using the same standard. Each additional compatible model that is launched can potentially increase both power battery orders and future battery swapping users. The more models and vehicles using the same battery specifications, the easier it is for batteries to be turned over within the network, and new automakers don't have to bear the full investment of an entire network on their own.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's "Key Points of Automotive Standardization Work in 2026" is still advancing the review and approval of chassis battery swapping standards and research on battery swapping compatibility; industry-wide rules have not yet been finalized. CATL's proposed 100,000 shared energy replenishment facilities will rely on the daily traffic flow generated by these vehicle models. The choice of which battery swapping standard to use during vehicle project initiation extends the relationship between battery manufacturers and automakers from the vehicle installation stage to post-delivery energy replenishment services.

In the past, automakers had the opportunity to close the technological gap during a product upgrade, and market rankings could be reshuffled after a new car's launch. The energy replenishment network doesn't operate on that same timeframe. It needs a sufficient number of vehicles on the road before stations can secure stable orders, allowing operators to continue replenishing the network. Increased station density, in turn, reduces the purchasing concerns of the next batch of users. Once this cycle is established, the cars sold in the previous round are paving the way for the next batch of new vehicles.

A blockbuster car can quickly rewrite sales figures, but it's difficult to make up for the lack of core components, battery capacity, and vehicle compatibility within a single product cycle.

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