CHINA: EV Boom Over Spring Festival, Small EV Sales Slump and NIO Achieves Swapping Record | 16 Feb 2026

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Welcome back to EV News China today, an EV boom over the Spring Festival.

Small EV sales slump and NEO achieves a swapping record.

Plus they tuned later in the show.

I'll tell you why reports. Last week about Ford planning a China-U.S. joint venture,

look to have come from a place of truth despite the initial denials.

Welcome to EV News China, the podcast dedicated to the world's largest EV market every day.

I bring you the latest headlines, insights and analysis from the heart of China's booming EV industry.

And I try and decode how the fast-moving developments in the East matter for the global EV industry.

China ended last year with 43.97 million EVs on the road.

That's pure BEVs and hybrids and EREVs.

Nearly 70% of that was fully electric.

That fleet doesn't merely change how China drives.

It changes how China charges.

And nothing exposes that more brutally than the Spring Festival.

Peak daily charging demand during the holiday is forecasted to exceed 34 million kilowatt hours daily.

It's incredible. That's up 17% on last year alone with highway demand 11 million kilowatt hours.

The state grid has activated over five and a half thousand support stations

and is distributing more than a million coupons via its e-charge app

to steer drivers towards urban charges.

Relieving the worst could congestion on the motorway network.

The Ministry of Transport plans to add more than 10,000 charging guns.

That's just the terminology there. You might call them connectors.

Highway service areas in 2026 and they're emphasizing high-power units.

Slow charging and an entire country traveling.

Well, they go well together.

Car makers have turned highway charging into a battleground.

Lio now has 8,643 battery swap stations.

Last time I checked including over a thousand on the motorway networks.

Lio also claims the largest cell phone supercharging network with 22,173 charges

and more than 1200 superchargers on the highways.

Alongside priority power allocation and remote battery preheating.

All things that are trying to alleviate this big hit on the grid.

ExPung runs a mobile charging program for emergency assistance

while Xiaomi offers recovery and reimbursement for any breakdown.

The infrastructure exists in China.

The question is whether it holds when the entire fleet all moves at once.

And so far, the answer is not comfortably, but it just about holds together.

Now, let's talk about some more January data coming in.

China's full purchase tax exemption on AVs ended at the end of last year in December.

From January buyers received only a 50% reduction and that's capped at 15,000 RMB.

It's a smidge over US$2,000 per vehicle.

Now, the small EV segment felt that impact the most.

Looking at the data today I can see that

Ji Li's Xing Wan led with 29,000 units 19% down on December.

MG4 took second on 10,000 units again down 29% on December.

Trailing by nearly three to one and losing further ground on the leader.

The declines deepened as you go down the table as well.

The Wuling Hongguang Mini EV for many years,

the number one EV sold in China, couldn't move it from the top of the charts.

That fell below 10,000 units in January for the first time.

That was at 7,133.

A 75% collapse month on month.

The Wuling Bingo S was fourth.

BYD's small models also suffered.

The Dolphin was down in fifth, a smidge under 5,700 units.

Down 63% though.

The Seagull was down.

The Ark Fox T1 down in seventh.

Firefly was eighth.

The Wuling Bingo ninth.

And the Ion UT rounding out the top 10 tables.

That lower price point EV was really hit by the change of policy.

Let's move on.

NEO completed almost 150,000 battery swaps yesterday on the 15th of February.

So the actual number was 146,649 battery swaps in a day.

It's the first day of China's spring festival holiday yesterday.

Just nine days after they hit 100 million total swaps,

the numbers speak for themselves.

The timing is obviously no accident.

China waves the expressway tolls during major holidays

and traffic surges accordingly.

The Ministry of Transport has forecasted 55 million vehicles a day

on the national highway network over the holiday period.

They forecast 4.5% more vehicle travel in total.

They're forecasting a single day peak of 71 million vehicles on the road

on the 22nd of February.

New energy vehicles will be 12 million moving per day,

peaking at 15 million on the 22nd.

That'll be over a fifth of all traffic on China's roads.

NEO's network now covers 3,750 swap stations nationwide

on the highways, as I mentioned in the previous story,

over 1,000 across nine of the north-south and 11 of the east-west routes.

They cover 550 cities.

The company also operates almost 5,000 charging stations,

almost 30,000 charging piles.

That's just a dispenser, if you like.

They call them piles in China.

Since its first swap station in 2018,

it was the 20th of May, it was in Shenzhen, actually,

and they spent more than 2.6 billion US dollars equivalent

on infrastructure.

For this year, they want to put 1,000 more swap stations in.

They've got the fifth-generation swap station technology,

which improves already on about 2.5 minutes

to stop for a whole new fully-charged battery.

And I think that swapping record they hit yesterday,

of 147,000 swaps almost,

in a day is definitely going to be beaten.

I'll keep an eye on that over the next week or so.

Let's talk about how China will force

physical car controls from next year.

I mentioned this on Friday show at the end of last week

when they're banning yoke steering wheels.

There's some issues around that.

Check out that podcast if you want.

It's to do with the safety of a yoke,

how they, at the minute, don't fully understand

how they deform, if you like, in a crash incident

and how 46% of driver injuries can come from a steering part.

China wants to reduce that.

And there's not enough known about,

they call them non-circular steering wheels.

We'll call them yokes like Tesla Cybertrucks

and the Toyota system,

Toyota are moving over to yokes.

They're going to be banned in China

from the 1st of January next year

because there's safety concerns around them

compared to a round steering wheel

and things like airbags as well.

There's actually more to the story

that I didn't tell you about last week,

only because I didn't get to researching it.

So, from the 1st of July next year,

so six months after the yoke ban,

all new EVs in the country

must have physical controls

for a newly defined list of functions.

This is a revision to the national standard

pushed through by the MIIT.

The rule takes direct aim at these minimalist cars.

The cars that probably Tesla made famous.

Now Tesla aren't guilty of this solely,

but of course Tesla did for many people

in the mainstream

lead the move to a single big touchscreen

and they've done a lot, of course,

to encourage that reputation as well,

moving things like gear selection,

getting rid of a physical stalk

and moving that to the screen.

In fact, getting rid of a driver display

in front of you in their Model 3 Model Y

and so they've led that.

Others have followed and copied

and I've long talked on the main EV news daily podcast

about how I'm not a huge fan of that

in luxury vehicles

because I don't think it feels premium.

I think a big screen in a cheap vehicle

can keep costs down,

but the minute you get to a mid-segment vehicle,

for me it feels cheap

and nearly everyone disagrees with me,

so I'm happy to be wrong on that one,

but I feel if you particularly want to get to the premium segment

and luxury segments,

big screens almost become tacky.

How are they going to date?

Especially because car makers have to carry on

updating their systems for,

well, all of time, really.

It's a vicious cycle they get themselves into.

You put a big screen in the car,

then you have to carry on supporting

the cars that you've sold.

Now, many consumers and drivers would say,

that's great, my car gets better

as I continue to drive it

and I entirely agree with that, by the way,

but there's a huge burden on the car makers

with these big screens

and then there are safety issues

and China has now said

enough's enough.

Tesla might have pioneered it,

but we've seen it from BYD, from Xiaomi and more,

all enthusiastically adopting it.

The list of hardware is not short,

so what cannot be moved to the screen

in China from next summer?

Turn signals, hazard lights,

horn, windscreen

or windshield wipers,

defroster, all must have

dedicated physical controls.

Gear selection, so

reverse, neutral and drive

are not allowed to be on the touchscreen alone.

They can be, doubled up,

but they must have a physical control.

Drive resistance systems,

power windows

can no longer be on the touchscreen.

Emergency call buttons

and even a switch to depower the car.

Every control must have

a minimum surface area,

they've even given it a 1cm by 1cm surface area.

It must be in a fixed position.

It must support blind operation

usable without looking, muscle memory.

So the way that many people learn

to drive, you keep your eyes on the road

and you can reach down and close a window

because you know that button is what closes the window.

You haven't got to take your eyes off the road at high speed

even momentarily. China says

that's not safe.

The revision hasn't come overnight.

They began the process in 2023.

They involved the likes of Geely, BYD

and others in forming the new rules.

The automated driving rules form a separate

but related strand of the same efforts.

China's mandatory standard for level 3

and level 4 automation

requires a safety performance equivalent

to a competent human driver.

It's now proposed rules introducing

some safety obligations, documented evidence

that the system meets standards alongside

new minimal risk conditions as well

requiring any vehicle whose automation

fails to reach a safe state

and so remote human assistance

for fully automated vehicles and more.

It's fascinating. I've mentioned this a lot

on the main podcast. I think probably even here

as well how China is

moving along its

journey over the last few decades

in terms of automotive from

copying

let's be honest about it.

A carbon copy of something

and that still happens in places

that the West has done

to forcing joint ventures to learn

from the West and to incorporate

Western technology moving on to

innovating itself and decoupling

itself from needing those joint ventures

to now setting the rules

and if they can work with

major areas such as the

European Union

those China rules become

de facto global standards.

When China sets the global standards

that I argue

is the end game of EV dominance

because if you make

the rules, if you set the rules

well everybody else has

to play your game

and I think over the last

few months

possibly years certainly

what I see coming down the line

is an increasing move

to the next phase

where China becomes the rule setter

and these rules all sound very reasonable

to me so if you want to sell a car there

if you're Tesla well now you have to redesign your cars

from the 1st of July

next year and there's often

there's also

exemptions for cars that are already being sold

you've got some extra time to

do them isn't that interesting we'll take a break we'll come back

and we'll talk a lot more

from Geely and Leo to stick around

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welcome back to the podcast

Geely does not want to build

its own factories in a world

that has unused production capacity

we've decided the smart move is to use

someone else's factory

the chairman Li Shufu has been explicit

about the logic global car manufacturing

has too many plants already adding more

piles cost on to the industry

the groups hardware

so the groups answer is

contract manufacturing use capacity

that's unused outside of China

Geely has the scale to make it credible

last year they sold 4.12 million vehicles

up 26% year on year

and over half of those were EVs

the strategy is already moving a partnership

with Renault in South America

built on Geely's architecture

rolling off the line at Renault's Korean plant

as well discussing with Ford

in Europe following the same logic

in a market with too many factories

Geely says making better use of existing capacity

is better than building our own new factories

Li Auto's legal department

says it's made progress

against counterfeiting in China

after an operation on

February the 13th last Friday

with police Li Auto's team

dismantled a

hub that was making counterfeit charges

the operation seized infringing products

fake trademarks

stickers and stamps and moulding Li Auto says

suspects admitted to running

online stores selling counterfeit

Li Auto charges urging buyers

to only use the official sources

Mercedes-Benz will recall

almost 20,000 DVs in China

mostly EQ8s and EQBs

the campaign covers vehicles built from

August of April 2021

to March 2024

the company also flags a software risk

it says the battery management system

software may overload an individual cell

the recall starts in June

until then

affected owners are worried

so they've been told to limit charging

no more than 80% and please park your vehicle

outdoors

BYD plans an enhanced C-line

plug-in hybrid 06 DMI

early this year

using its mid-size SUV

further on electric range

the upgraded C-line 06 DMI

uses a 175kW motor

and a pure electric range of 220km

on the China cycle

the pricing will go up slightly but by no more than 5,000

you won

the C-line 06 will offer an optional

assisted driver systems called God's IC

buyers can enhance God's IC

with more LiDAR

BYD builds it on its E-platform

3.0 EVO

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The reception, though, was cool. Some official warned the plans would face political resistance in Washington,

others see a formal investment agreement as a possible outcome of the United States and China meeting in April.

The model would invert China's historic playbook. For decades, Beijing required Western automakers to partner with local firms to gain market access.

Ford operates joint ventures with Chang'an and JMC under that legacy agreement.

China has since relaxed those rules, Tesla, Toyota Lexus plant as well now, wholly foreign-owned,

and Ford has separately explored partnerships with Geely on manufacturing.

Reports of talks with Xiaomi on US production were flatly denied only a few days ago,

and I wonder whether those stories which came out from reputable news organizations well sourced as well

are all part of what Ford's chief executive admitting to hear which he did have conversations with US officials about exactly this kind of thing.

And that's your podcast for today. Thanks for listening. See you on the next one.

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CHINA: EV Boom Over Spring Festival, Small EV Sales Slump and NIO Achieves Swapping Record | 16 Feb 2026

About this episode

EV

EV boom

Ford

joint venture

battery swap stations

electric vehicle charging infrastructure

Geely Xingwan

MG4

Wuling Hongguang Mini EV

Wuling Bingo

BYD Dolphin

Seagull

NEO

charging stations

charging piles

fifth-generation swap station technology

Tesla Cybertruck

driver display

Tesla Model 3

Tesla Model Y

big screens

BYD

Xiaomi

hazard lights

turn signals

power windows

emergency call buttons

Geely

EVs

Renault

architecture

making better use of existing capacity

Mercedes-Benz EQB

Request an Explanation

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