GAC Aion is the NEV (new energy vehicle) division of GAC. In August 2021, it revealed that its GAC Aion V would be able to charge at 6C, with a speed of 480 kW. The Chinese company also said it would offer battery swapping. On April 21, the company said its first station was working in Guangzhou, where its headquarters are.
Ironically, all that the company presented were two sketches of the battery-swapping station and nothing else. As bold statements need strong evidence, we would rather wait for the first pictures or videos to emerge. The one embedded below just shows the SUV that should get its battery packs replaced first.
GAC Aion’s first battery-swapping station allegedly also has the A480 fast chargers that could give the Aion V 80% of charge from 30% in under five minutes. The secret for the batteries to stand so much power would be graphene. According to GAC, the battery pack would last 1 million kilometers (621,371 miles) even with 6C charging. Again, we need to see it to believe it.
The Chinese carmaker also said that its A480 fast chargers would be fully automatic, thanks to the Aion Robot Charger system. According to CNEVPost, GAC Aion wants this automatic charging process to take care of autonomous vehicles when they are available. If these EVs can have their battery packs swapped, why bother with fast charging? We’d ask GAC Aion if it had a press department that we could contact.
While only the Aion V has swappable batteries, GAC Aion intends to make that possible with its entire lineup based on the GEP 3.0 architecture. The company said that would start to happen in 2023. It seems that it wants 220 stations solely for the Aion V units it is planning to sell this year. That’s something else we would ask if we knew who to talk to at the Chinese company – and if it cared to answer.
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