How to get a fully charged EV battery in 99 seconds!

[cadblu]

Chinese Automaker GAC has announced a subscription model for its new midsize EV AION starting around $13,000

Digital Trends Article - Battery Subscription Model

Summary: While the rest of the world is arguing about charging times, a Chinese automaker has just launched an electric sedan that lets you swap its entire battery pack faster than most people make a decent cup of coffee.

GAC Aion officially unveiled the RT Super on April 8, 2026, a mid-size sedan with an entry price of roughly $13,000, as part of the company’s battery rental or subscription scheme. In other words, buyers pay for the car body upfront while leasing the battery separately for around $58 per month.

How does RT Super’s battery subscription model work?
Although it may sound unusual at first, a subscription model for batteries (also called battery-as-a-service) is growing quite popular in China’s EV market (and in the nascent yet expanding Indian EV market, too). The pricing model essentially separates the battery from the upfront price, making EVs more accessible to a wider audience.

Anyways, coming back to the RT Super, it carries a 54 kWh CATL battery pack, which claims to deliver a range of around 314 miles on a single charge. Furthermore, it can accelerate from 0 to 100 60 mph in around 7.5 seconds, all thanks to the powerful 150 kW motor.

For those who’d rather plug in the sedan than swap batteries, fast charging takes the battery from 30% to 80% in around 26 minutes. For everyone else, GAC Aion is betting on the car’s battery-swapping ability.

Can 99 seconds actually replace a trip to the EV charging station?

Using CATL’s Choco-SEB battery swap platform, buyers should be able to replace a depleted battery pack for a fully charged one in under 100 seconds. Even if that time extends to two or three minutes, it would still be much, much faster than the time EVs take for a complete recharge.

In addition, CATL’s expanding Choco swap network is targeting over 3,000 stations across 140+ cities by the end of 2026; the long-term goal is 30,000 stations. Instead of focusing on ultra-fast charging, the automaker is betting on swappable batteries as a viable alternative, and it sounds quite promising to me.

Inside, buyers get a 14.6-inch central display, Huawei HiCar 4.0 connectivity, dual-zone climate control, and a lifetime powertrain warranty. If the EV performs well in one of the largest EV markets in the world, it could help frame battery swapping as a mainstream refueling model for EVs.

 

[ElectricShitbox]

I love the idea of battery swapping. NIO has been doing it in China and now Europe for years (I think I heard they're at 100 million swaps now). Their current system takes 3-5 minutes to swap. There's a lot to like about the concept of battery swapping, especially in these early days of improving chemistries. The way NIO works is you buy the car minus the battery, so it's cheaper upfront, then you lease the basic battery. This does mean another subscription, so that is a downside. But then you're not responsible for the battery. The batteries can be slow charged at the swap station to minimize degradation (and the station full of batteries can act as grid-stabilizing storage). Batteries can be pulled out of circulation as they degrade, and improved batteries with higher power density and/or better chemistries can be introduced. Also, you can do your normal commute with the smallest battery, then swap to a larger one for a road trip (NIO has an additional fee to use the larger batteries). This model is big in China because their housing density makes charging difficult for people in apartments and condos, and the use case is closer to how you would live with an ICE vehicle. There's only a couple downsides, first being that the removable battery is going to take up more space than a permanent one, second being the subscription. But the biggest barrier here would be that a battery would need to be standard across all car makers, or you'll end up with competing standards and insufficient swap station coverage.

 

[ElectricShitbox]

There was a company called Ample in the US that was working on Modular Battery Swapping. It used multiple smaller modules, so you could get different capacities and fit different vehicles all with different quantities of the same basic modules. They were testing with modified 500e's, but I believe they went bankrupt last year.

 

[ScooterAsheville]

The long term cost/performance improvement curve in batteries makes this a short term solution at best, just like hybrids and EREVs. They're both engineering dead ends.

You can already charge some vehicles in the same time. Charging speed is on a relentless improvement slope. Gravimetric and volumetric density are on relentless improvement slopes. Cost and life are on relentless improvement slopes.

Battery swapping is mainly a way to entrap buyers into dependency, bringing consistent income in the door. Now the buyer gets a low upfront cost, as they're not paying for a battery. But they end up paying more in the long term. They're trapped in a monoplist subscription model.

All companies salivate over the idea of entrapping you in a subscription model. The most successful is Apple (well, one could argue it's the NFL). Look at their valuation and earnings. That's the power of closed-loop subscription models.

 

[sidneyhornblower]

I've wondered for years why this wasn't a model, like putting new batteries in a flashlight. Tesla considered it but discarded the idea, though I don't know their reasoning. Batteries as a subscription service isn't something I've thought about, but I'll be interested to see if this approach works.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Not to make this a political debate, but it makes me wonder how societal and cultural norms impact adoption of battery swapping, in the view of battery owning vs. sharing. 🤔

 

[ElectricShitbox]

Not to make this a political debate, but it makes me wonder how societal and cultural norms impact adoption of battery swapping, in the view of battery owning vs. sharing. 🤔

Framing it as "sharing" would be sure to kill the idea here, haha. But framed as being able to switch from ICE to EV without changing your habits could make it popular, along with not having to own the least reliable part of an EV.
I agree that the latest fast charging tech mostly makes this irrelevant, and I harbor a deep hatred for subscriptions, it's just fascinating as an alternative solution.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Crap, here goes the speculation train...

But how would such a network be engineered & implemented here? Tesla Supercharging stations cost less to install coast to coast than battery swapping (sharing?) garages? I don't know for sure, maybe someone out there knows.

 

[Twisted Santa]

Battery swapping is mainly a way to entrap buyers into dependency, bringing consistent income in the door. Now the buyer gets a low upfront cost, as they're not paying for a battery. But they end up paying more in the long term. They're trapped in a monoplist subscription model.

All companies salivate over the idea of entrapping you in a subscription model. The most successful is Apple (well, one could argue it's the NFL). Look at their valuation and earnings. That's the power of closed-loop subscription models.

Printer ink!

 

[ElectricShitbox]

Crap, here goes the speculation train...

But how would such a network be engineered & implemented here? Tesla Supercharging stations cost less to install coast to coast than swapping garages?

The logistics of starting to implement it here would be a nightmare. I honestly think it's too late. But the advantages are massive if you consider that a swap station could be 100% offgrid and/or do grid stabilization. Batteries can be charged directly from solar, or off-peak, or whatever makes sense. The whole station could draw less peak power than a single megawatt charger.