China’s First Battery Swapping Trunk Line for Heavy-Duty Trucks

Jointly built by Fujian Expressway Group and CATL’s subsidiary QIJI Energy, Ningde-Xiamen Trunk Line provides electric heavy-duty trucks traveling between Ningde and Xiamen with timely battery swapping service.

QIJI Energy, unlocking energy efficiency benefits

Driven by the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals, electrification of heavy-duty trucks is now a general trend. Independently developed by CATL, QIJI Energy is the world's first all-in-one heavy-duty truck chassis battery-swapping solution. It allows safe, fast, and cost-efficient refueling for electric heavy-duty trucks and opens up new possibilities for building a nationwide heavy-duty truck battery swapping network. The QIJI battery swapping solution shatters the limits of single application scenarios and brings new opportunities for developing electric heavy-duty trucks.

The 420 km Ningde-Xiamen Trunk Line has four battery swap stations. With its innovative technology and operation mode advantages, it will eliminate the range anxiety and refueling anxiety facing the heavy-duty truck drivers traveling between Ningde and Xiamen, building an environmentally friendly, affordable, and efficient battery-swapping trunk line for heavy-duty trucks. 

Based on the 120,000 heavy trucks in Fujian Province and the vehicle-battery separation business model, the QIJI battery swapping solution can reduce the logistics cost by about ¥3B and cut carbon emissions by more than 18M tons per year without factoring into the oil price fluctuation and increase of vehicle purchase cost. 

Pursuing ecosystem-based development 

Ningde-Xiamen Trunk Line is a model for the open ecosystem of heavy-duty truck battery swapping networks. It opens up a new era of green trunk line transportation and provides a replicable model for transforming and upgrading China’s heavy-duty truck industry. Creating a nationwide heavy-duty truck battery-swapping network is a systematic project requiring more partners' contributions. At the opening ceremony of the Ningde-Xiamen Trunk Line, QIJI Energy also signed strategic cooperation agreements with several partners to explore new zero-carbon scenarios in terms of logistics, smart technology, and transportation to build a unique ecosystem of nationwide heavy-duty truck battery-swapping network. 

“QIJI Energy is an open platform. We hope to build a vibrant ecosystem with all partners on this platform,” stated Dr. Robin Zeng, chairman and general manager of CATL

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. From the Ningde-Xiamen Trunk Line, QIJI Energy will move from Fujian to the whole country. With leading and innovative technology and business model, it will accelerate the heavy-duty truck industry's electrification and promote the transportation industry's zero-carbon development. CATL will join industry partners to create a new green and low-carbon industrial development pattern.