- CATL and Dongfeng Liuzhou sign five-year pact to roll out a battery-bank leasing model for commercial EVs.
- Partnership builds full-life-cycle services and joint tech standards for swapping, testing, maintenance, recycling.
- CATL’s Qiji swap network aims 900 stations by end-2026 to cover ~80% of China trunk-line freight by 2030.
On Aug. 18, Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor and CATL signed a five-year strategic cooperation agreement in Ningde.
The partnership will extend beyond conventional power battery supply to product development, technical standards, battery-swapping networks and full-life-cycle battery operations.
A key focus of the agreement is the “battery bank” and battery-vehicle separation model.
Under the model, customers buying new energy commercial vehicles would not need to bear the full cost of the battery upfront.
Instead, they could use batteries through leasing or asset-management arrangements, lowering the initial purchase cost of the vehicle.
This represents the biggest difference between the new partnership and a conventional battery procurement relationship between Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor and CATL.
The two companies plan to establish a full-life-cycle service system covering the vehicle and battery.
This provides one-stop services including battery testing, maintenance, replacement, recycling and residual-value management.
On the technology side, the companies will jointly develop solutions across multiple commercial vehicle categories.
These encompass tractors, dump trucks, cargo trucks, special-purpose vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell commercial vehicles.
They will also optimize battery safety, durability and application suitability for different transportation and operating scenarios.
Meanwhile, the two companies will participate in the development of technical specifications and standards for commercial vehicle batteries.
Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor’s Chenglong brand has already launched battery-swapping heavy-duty trucks, including the Chenglong H5 battery-swapping rigid truck and the Yiwei 5 battery-swapping tractor.
As the scope of the partnership expands, joint development will extend further into new energy special-purpose vehicles for applications such as dump trucking, construction waste transportation and sanitation.
CATL, meanwhile, has already established a battery-swapping infrastructure network, with its commercial vehicle battery-swapping business primarily operated under its Qiji Battery Swap brand.
As of the end of 2025, Qiji Battery Swap had built 305 battery-swapping stations and plans to have 900 stations in operation by the end of 2026.
Under its current plan, the network is expected to cover around 80% of China’s trunk-line freight capacity by 2030.
For Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor, the value of the partnership with CATL extends beyond access to batteries.
Leveraging CATL’s existing battery-swapping infrastructure could also reduce the pressure to build a proprietary network.
China’s Ministry of Transport and 10 other government departments previously set a target for new energy heavy-duty trucks to reach a 40% penetration rate by 2030, with the national fleet expected to reach about 1.6 million vehicles.
In high-frequency operating scenarios such as long-haul trunk transportation, port drayage, mining areas and urban construction, battery swapping is emerging as an important technology route for battery-electric heavy-duty trucks.
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