BAIC, CATL Sign Swap-Battery Pact Targeting 1 Million Vehicles

The significance here is less about the 1 million target than about the distribution model: putting CATL's swap stations inside BAIC dealer sites and opening BAIC's multi-brand lineup to the Chocolate ecosystem turns battery swapping from a single-OEM feature into shared infrastructure. That matters for fleet and commercial operators most exposed to uptime and battery-cost risk, and for rival swap standards competing for OEM commitments. The open question is whether dealer-hosted stations achieve the utilization needed for the joint operating model to scale, and whether other automakers follow BAIC into the ecosystem.