Geely agrees to take 30% of NIO Power for Yiyi Power plus RMB640 million

NIO Inc. said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on September 28, 2026 that, subject to regulatory clearances and other customary closing conditions, a subsidiary of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., Ltd. will subscribe for newly issued equity of NIO Energy Investment (Hubei) Co., Ltd., the NIO subsidiary the filing calls NIO Power and describes as operating its battery swapping and charging businesses, and will hold 30.0% of it on completion. The consideration is the Geely subsidiary's 100% equity interest in Yiyi Internet Technology (Chongqing) Co., Ltd., which Geely's release calls Yiyi Power and the filing describes as a Geely Holding Group subsidiary providing battery swapping services for the commercial mobility market, plus RMB640 million in cash, and the filing puts NIO Power's post-money valuation at approximately RMB16 billion. CnEVPost converts the two figures to $94.8 million and $2.37 billion at 6.7489 yuan to the dollar.

On completion, per the filing, NIO Holding Co., Ltd., which the filing calls NIO China, keeps a controlling 63.6%, and an existing investor, Wuhan Guangchuang Emerging Technology Phase I Venture Capital Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership), holds the remaining 6.4%. A second transaction runs concurrently under the same closing conditions, and the filing gives no target closing date for either.

The terms, and where the filing hedges

Two clauses keep Geely's 30.0% from being a fixed number. The stake is subject to post-closing adjustments tied to what the filing calls certain operational milestones, under which it "may be reduced to no less than 20% in the event of underperformance." The Geely subsidiary was also granted an option to put a further RMB640 million in cash into NIO Power, exercisable within the earlier of two years after closing and the date NIO Power enters binding agreements for a new round of financing; exercised, and before any milestone adjustment, that would take Geely's interest to 34.0% and NIO China's to 60.0%.

The concurrent transaction runs the other way. NIO China has agreed to subscribe for newly issued equity in Zhejiang Haohan Energy Technology Co., Ltd., which the filing describes as a Geely Holding Group subsidiary that operates a battery charging business, and will hold 10.0% of it at completion. The filing says the cash consideration "will be used to purchase certain charging assets from NIO" and does not state the amount.

On Geely vehicles that swap batteries, NIO's two disclosure documents are more guarded than the two newsroom releases. The filing says NIO and Geely Holding Group "have made preliminary plans for the adoption of battery swapping technology and provision of related services" for both consumer-facing vehicle models and commercial mobility businesses from Geely's related entities, and that finalization and implementation of those plans "are subject to further discussions between the relevant parties"; the same paragraph appears in the text NIO furnished to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on September 28, 2026 as an exhibit to a Form 6-K. NIO's newsroom release, datelined Hangzhou, September 28, 2026, puts the consumer plans in the future tense: "Geely Holding Group will develop consumer-facing battery-swappable vehicle models, while NIO Power will provide battery swapping services for these models." Geely Holding's release of September 28, 2026 carries that sentence too, and neither release uses the word "preliminary." Geely's release omits the valuation, the milestone adjustment, the option and the Wuhan fund's stake, and says the deal "builds on the battery-swapping cooperation established by Geely Holding Group and NIO in 2023."

The networks being joined

NIO's release supplies the operating figures. As of September 27, 2026, it says, NIO had invested over RMB20 billion in charging and battery swapping and ran 9,433 swapping and charging stations, including 4,126 Power Swap Stations and 5,307 charging stations with 30,598 charging piles. NIO Power, the release says, aims to have 10,000 Power Swap Stations in operation by 2030, with annual electricity demand across the network expected to exceed 10 billion kWh. Yiyi Power's battery swapping business for commercial mobility services, it says, will subsequently be integrated into NIO Power.

On Geely's side, NIO's release says Haohan Energy has deployed 2,500 charging stations with more than 12,000 charging connectors across 232 cities, and that by the end of 2027 Geely plans to build more than 22,000 charging stations with more than 100,000 charging connectors, including more than 15,000 smart charging stations with over 50,000 smart charging connectors, with the goal of being first in the industry to cover every county-level city in China. It dates Geely's launch of its next-generation AI-powered charging technology to September 23, 2026, the launch behind Geely's claim of up to 2,250 kW peak charging power.

At the Hangzhou signing, CnEVPost reported, William Li, NIO's founder, chairman and CEO, said NIO's fifth-generation swap station can accommodate the body dimensions of more than 95% of passenger vehicles on the market, laying the groundwork for serving more brands; CnEVPost says NIO brought that station online on August 7, 2026 for its NIO, ONVO and FIREFLY brands.

How the deal is framed and what preceded it

NIO's release calls the deal a concrete step to support the goals of the 15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Intelligent Connected New Energy Vehicle Industry, address what it calls involution-style competition, and improve the allocation of industry resources. Li, per CnEVPost's account of the ceremony, said the partnership is part of the companies' response to China's campaign to curb cutthroat competition, and described it as an effort by Chinese automakers to reduce duplicate investment and improve innovation efficiency. NIO's release quotes Li: "The collaboration between NIO and Geely in charging and battery swapping is open to the broader industry."

The two companies signed a strategic partnership agreement on battery swapping in Hangzhou on November 29, 2023, under which, that release said, they would co-develop two battery swapping standards for private cars and commercial vehicles and develop battery swappable vehicles compatible with each other's battery swap systems; the Geely signatory then was Jack Liu, CEO of Yiyi Power, the business Geely is now contributing. NIO's 2026 release again says the two sides "will co-develop unified battery swapping technologies and standards for consumer-facing vehicle models."

CnEVPost says the cooperation with Geely expanded to charging network connectivity in March 2024, that NIO Power announced a RMB1.5 billion strategic investment led by the Wuhan Guangchuang fund in May 2024, and that a March 2025 agreement under which NIO said CATL was moving forward with an investment of up to RMB2.5 billion in NIO Power "never materialized."

Outlook

The filing conditions both transactions on regulatory clearances it does not name and gives no timing, so the next document to watch for is a completion announcement. The plans for battery swapping on Geely consumer models and commercial mobility businesses are the part to watch: the filing and its SEC copy call them preliminary and subject to further discussions, while both releases already describe Geely developing swap-capable consumer models served by NIO Power. The option lets Geely raise its agreed 30.0% to 34.0% within the earlier of two years after closing and NIO Power's next binding financing round, and the milestone adjustment can lower it, on underperformance, to no less than 20%.