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GAC AION, the automobile brand of the GAC Group, announced on Thursday that its first super charging and power swap station was officially completed in Guangzhou, where it is headquartered.

GAC AION was established in 2017 and, at present, has several automobile models on sale, including the LX Plus, V Plus, S Plus and others. Among them, the AION LX Plus, as a pure electric vehicle, has a battery life of more than 1000km.

According to the company, in addition to supporting automatic battery replacement, the power station also supports automatic charging. The site has installed several A480 supercharging piles with peak voltages up to 1000V and peak currents up to 600A. The station boasts five-minute charging which enables vehicles to drive another 200km.

Powered by photovoltaic energy, the swap station features a bolt-on structure that can replace a vehicle’s battery in as little as 2.5 minutes and supports a replacement life of up to 8,000 cycles.

In addition, GAC AION plans to build 220 such stations in Guangzhou this year and a total of 1,000 in the city by 2025, making charging as easy as refueling.

As background, according to the battery swap safety standard drafted by companies including NIO, BAIC and Geely and implemented in November last year, the methods by which batteries are installed in vehicles include bolt-on and snap-on.

Models with snap-on batteries need to be able to support at least 5,000 battery swaps, while models with bolt-on batteries need to be able to support at least 1,500 battery swaps, according to the standard.

NIO‘s vehicles also have bolt-on batteries, and the company’s second-generation battery swap stations can automatically replace batteries in as little as three minutes.

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. (CATL), one of the biggest battery giants in the world, also entered the power swap market as the company launched its own EVOGO battery swap services in Xiamen, in southeast China’s Fujian Province. By the end of this year, the number of fast-swap battery stations in Xiamen is expected to total more than 30.

SEE ALSO: CATL Launches First EVOGO Battery Swap Services in Xiamen