CHINA: NIO Swaps 2 Million, BYD Teases 2.1MW Charging and Hongguang Mini Refresh | 27 Feb 2026

Welcome back to EV News China, today NIO swaps 2 million, BYD teases 2.1 megawatt charging

and the Hongguang mini refresh plus they tuned later in the show, I'll tell you which 3 Chinese

car makers break into the global top 10.

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

You get the latest headlines, insights and analysis from the heart of China's booming

EV industry and I decode how fast moving developments in the east shape of the global

EV landscape.

NIO pushed battery swapping hard over China's official new year holiday travel rush between

February 10th and 23rd, it's 3,750 swap stations logged 2 million and 73,000 swaps, that's above

2 million for the first time in that period, average daily swaps climbed 30% year on year

versus last year with daily record set on five straight days from the 18th to the 22nd.

Swapping sat inside a wider energy push, NIO operates almost 7,000 combined energy

facilities across China, including swapping and charging.

Those sites handled 3.2 million charging events over the holiday period, daily average services

up almost 27%, NIO's expressway network dispensed 25 million kilowatt hours of electricity,

it said 15% of all EV energy consumed on China's motorways during the period.

Now Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun has published the Spring Festival Travel Report for the

nine-day holiday period from the 15th to the 23rd.

Xiaomi EV owners drove more than 405 million kilometers, 252 million miles across 369 cities

nationwide, in fact one vehicle logged the longest single trip one Xiaomi driver did 10,700 kilometers

and 6,660 miles. Hangzhou, Shanghai and Suzhou took the top three destinations by volume of

Xiaomi's on the move and drivers used their intelligent driving assistance for about 100

million kilometers, 25% of all kilometers driven. There's some really fascinating data in here,

let me go on and tell you that the system hit a single day peak of 1,820 kilometers per vehicle

for using their intelligent driver assistance. Auto Park was used 3.6 million times over the

holidays and their in-car voice assistant, Xiao AI, activated 147 million times. In fact,

the karaoke feature recorded almost 400,000 sessions over the holidays.

Away from the cabin, owners used vehicle to load 16,500 times delivering 4,000 kilowatts

hours of power and Xiaomi's service team handled 111,000 supporting queries and over 3,000

tire repairs. The longest single rescue mission was almost three and a half thousand kilometers

transporting a vehicle to be fixed. What's fascinating about that is Xiaomi know all of that.

I mean, why not? They're connected vehicles. There may be some in the audience that feel

just a little bit creepy. The car company you bought your car from logging literally everything

about how you use your car, even down to whether you used vehicle to load or belted out your

karaoke favorite. Now BYD will stage a tech launch on the 5th of March. Four items sit at the center,

megawatt flash charging 2.0, the next generation blade battery, their hybrid DMI system and God's

or dipilot 5.0. That's our intelligent driving. BYD's also started seeding the story. This week

it's been rolling out the next generation charging stations. These haven't been official pictures

that I've seen personally. They've been online on Chinese social media. One particular one on

Weibo showed their new generation megawatt flash charging systems in a T shaped frame,

a central column, and then two dispenser cables or four dispensers actually to each side

coming hanging down from a sliding rail. They say it cuts things like the cables

dragging on the ground and reduces strain on users because the cables can get really heavy

these days. It's a great piece of design, but it's the numbers that actually do the heavy lifting,

not their customers picking up the heavy cables. Megawatt flash charging will push peak capacity

to 2.1 megawatts with a single gun output of 1.5 megawatts. That's 1500 kilowatts through a single

cable. And if you want the full 2.1 or 2100 kilowatts of charging power and bearing in mind,

most EVs, if you're charging a couple of hundred kilowatts, you probably consider yourself having

a pretty good EV. That's described as 250 miles added in five minutes. BYD say that they have a

target of having 4,000 of these flash charging stations by the end of the year. The second

generation blade battery provides the other half of the pitch, 1,000 volt architecture

and charge rates of 10C. BYD will talk hybrids, their new DMI system, DMI 6.0, delivering almost

200 miles of pure electric range. And that's just for a hybrid system, either in a plug-in

hybrid or an e-rev. And their ADAS system, which is already in 2.56 million vehicles,

will get an improvement. Now, the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV has a new launch,

Wuling calling it the fifth generation, though the change is more like a gentle refresh. The

second generation five-door city car arrived last February at about US$6,000 equivalent,

about US$45,000. It went on to record 61,500 registrations, but it has fallen recently,

so they're going to refresh the model to perhaps steady the numbers a little bit.

For a period of time, back in the early 2020s, the original Hongguang Mini EV was always China's

best-selling car every month, but it's lost that position. The refresh brings circular headlights

linked by an LED strip. The front end looks like Geely's Panda Mini. The revised five-door

is 12mm longer, 10mm wider, and 3mm slightly smaller, so they're playing around with the

dimensions of it. It's a wheelbase of 2.2m. They say that the size change comes from revised

bumpers. Nothing structural. Buyers get grey, green, or beige. A two-door variant has been

filed for a sales license in China, and pricing, we think, should still land in the same price.

That would be $44,500 to $51,000. That is about $6,000 to about $7,000.

Now, China has seen Tesla delivery times fluctuate, but now you can get yourself a Model 3 or a Model

Y in as little as one week. Buyers have been facing waits for several months in the past,

as Tesla has lost some popularity with Chinese buyers. This shift suggests Giga Shanghai has now

cleared any kind of order backlog, and if you order a Tesla, there really is no waiting. If you

simply cannot wait for the competition, maybe the Xiaomi YU7, the direct competitor to the Model Y,

or the newly refreshed SU7, we'll get more details on that in coming weeks,

but no doubt that'll be popular. There'll be a wait list if you simply must have a car straight

away. Well, for Chinese buyers, you can walk into a Tesla store or go online and have one,

at least within a week. So Tesla hasn't leaned on price cuts because really, they're not able to.

Rather, they've been following the orders from Beijing, which is don't cut prices and get into

price wars again, find other things to do. So Tesla's been extending their seven-year ultra

low interest. That's not interest free, but they do do a five-year zero percent interest deal,

and that's continued through to the 31st of March, but they've been extending that

on a month-by-month basis. I would presume that just continues indefinitely until

demand improves. Tesla's extended the promotion twice this year, started in the first week of

January. Now, Stellantis is considering a plan to use Leap Motor technology in mass-market European

cars that they make, like their own brand Fiat, Opel Vauxhall, and Peugeot. It would adopt Leap

Motor's batteries and powertrain. If Stellantis were to go ahead, it would mark the first time

a major Western car maker uses wholesale lock, stock, and barrel, a Chinese platform and software

for its European model base. That step would push the group beyond distribution and Leap Motor,

we'd be part of the product design. Stellantis, of course, works with Leap Motor. They invested

1.5 billion euros for 20 percent of the company three years ago. In May 2024, Leap Motor International

was formed, a joint venture which Stellantis owns 51 percent to sell Leap Motors in Europe,

and through Leap Motor International they sell the big SUV, the C10. Also, I've seen some great

prices on all of those Leap Motors, by the way, but for a large SUV, some very good monthly pricing.

The C10 production is launched in Malaysia, and Leap Motor vehicles enter showrooms in South

Africa soon too. They also sell now the B10 and the T03 at lower price points. They have something

in the mid-10s, mid-20s, and early 30s to sell Europeans. Now, Stellantis is evaluating an expansion

of the joint venture to reach Leap Motor's more advanced EV technology. If they did sign a deal

this year, the talks they say are a very early stage though, but it could be done.

The obstacles are plenty. They sit in law, and politics, just as much as engineering,

you see EU data protection rules could limit how Stellantis uses things like Chinese software,

and US restrictions on connected vehicles with Chinese ties add a layer of complication for

those vehicles. There, Europe has infamously tight privacy laws with GDPR and personal data,

ensuring that software doesn't overly share our personal data. It's why, as an aside,

many people are starting to look at what they consider American overreach into things like

forcing Microsoft or Meta or Google to hand over data on its users without warrant.

Many people, particularly in Europe, there's a big movement in Europe right now

to use European services, to use European things like emails and VPNs. One of the bigger ones is

called Proton, but there's many mail providers to use European AI, to use German search engines

and so there is an increased awareness right now, things like data and privacy, which could

add some complications, but we'll wait and see. We'll take a break, we'll come back,

we'll talk about BMW and Great Wall Motor and more, stick around.

Alright, welcome back to the podcast. Great Wall Motor signed an agreement with the government of

Esperito Santo in Brazil to build a second manufacturing plant in the state's Aracruz

industrial park. Great Wall Motor targets production to start in 2028. The new plant

will have a $200,000 a year vehicle annual production rate, four times that of the existing

Brazilian plant. Stamping, welding, painting and final assembly, initial investment $60 million.

BMWs opened talks with the European Commission about not paying those tariffs on Chinese-made

cars for minis, agreeing to a minimum import price scheme, according to Handelsblatt, citing

two sources. The talks target the almost 21% additional levy that the European Union imposed

on Chinese-made cars, which BMW have to pay on the mini-Aceman and Mini Cooper. Those models

face the combined tariff of almost 31%, that is the 10% base duty in the new levies as well.

Now, this new route opened up with Volkswagen doing a deal already for the Chinese-made

Cupra Tavascan to avoid those tariffs. Now, BMW are said to be close to doing a deal for the minis.

Next up, battery technology. A Chinese research team has reported

lithium battery cells reaching 700Wh per kilogram, according to a paper in Nature magazine,

published two days ago on the 25th of February. The work targets the electrolyte. Traditional

lithium battery electrolytes pair lithium salts with carbonate solvents, where a lithium oxygen

bond drives salt dissolution. Stay with me. Carbonate solvents require large volumes of

electrolyte, which caps energy density and also limits low temperature performance. It's the

chemistry that governs the reason why we get an hour EVs when it's winter and we can't drive as far.

Now, the team developed what they say is fluorinated hydrocarbon solvent molecules that

dissolve lithium salts via lithium fluorine coordination rather than a lithium oxygen bond.

Fluorinated hydrocarbon solvents wet electrode services more effectively than a carbonate

easter and reducing the amount of electrolyte needed. The weaker bond accelerates charge transfer.

What does it all mean in the real world? Well, that means that even at minus 50 degrees Celsius,

minus 50C, there are very few places on earth you're going to drive an EV, at minus 50C,

you would still get 400Wh per kilogram and that is about double a lot of EVs on the road right now

at regular temperatures. For example, let me put all of that in context. CATL's current

Kirin battery tops out at 255Wh per kilogram system level when it's all integrated into a vehicle.

Solid-state batteries have yet to breach 400, but the 700Wh per kilogram figure probably refers

to cell level. I don't know why they would add reference pack level. That'd be cell level specific

energy, but still, even before it's put into a system, real-world system density would be lower,

but still infinitely higher than what we have on the road right now. Finally, the top 20 global

automotive sales tables were locked in yesterday after Stellantis published their full-year

results and the headline is three Chinese car makers are now inside the global top 10

for the first time in history. BYD landed on 4.6 million vehicles. They sold 2.25 million pure

BEVs. SIC ranked seventh and Geely rose two places to ninth, marking five consecutive years of

growth for Geely. Policy helped China's government trade-in scheme has been generating over 358 billion

dollars equivalent in vehicle sales and driving more than 11.5 million trade-ins last year. EVs were

60% of the replacements and EV production and sales both topping 16 million units last year

and crossing over 50% of all new car sales for the first time. A sign of things to come, which you

know about already, because we do this every day on EV News China, but I think the rest of the world

have a surprise coming their way. That's your podcast for today. See you Monday when we're back on the

spinoff show.

CHINA: NIO Swaps 2 Million, BYD Teases 2.1MW Charging and Hongguang Mini Refresh | 27 Feb 2026

About this episode

NIO

BYD

2.1 megawatt charging

battery swapping

electric vehicle charging infrastructure

kilowatt hour

megawatt flash charging

charging power

EV

flash charging station

plug-in hybrid

ADAS system

Wuling Hongguang Mini EV

gentle refresh

Tesla Model 3

Tesla Model Y

Xiaomi SU7

price wars

zero percent interest deal

Stellantis

powertrain

joint venture

Chevrolet C10

Alpina B10

Great Wall Motor

stamping, welding, painting and final assembly

tariffs

Cupra Tavascan

Geely

trade-in scheme

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