[Automotive: CATL Partners With J&T Express To Put Over 5,000 Heavy-Duty Trucks With Battery Swapping Into Operation]

On July 1, Choco-Swap, a subsidiary of CATL, announced that a total of 2,000 battery swap stations had been launched nationwide in the first half of the year. The network covers 180 cities across 31 provincial-level regions, with its coverage rate in small and medium-sized cities exceeding 80%. Its highway battery swap network has also achieved breakthrough development, expanding from clustered core cities to county-level markets. The first batch of battery swap stations in Hong Kong has officially entered full operation.

This week, China's second-life application market operated smoothly overall, with prices across all categories remaining flat. Market transactions were dominated by just-in-time procurement, and the supply-demand pattern did not show significant fluctuations. Raw material trends diverged: lithium carbonate stopped falling and rebounded this week, while nickel sulphate and cobalt sulphate continued their weak, sluggish decline. However, second-life battery cell prices did not undergo noticeable adjustments accordingly. Currently, second-life product prices are already at a relatively low level, with limited downside room; meanwhile, the demand side also lacks significant incremental support and upward momentum. In the short term, with neither rise nor fall easy, prices naturally remained stable. On the supply side, quotations for new battery cells were generally stable, providing a clear price anchor for second-life A- and B-grade battery cells, and their quotations remained steady throughout. Dismantled battery cells, supported by rigid dismantling costs, saw prices stabilize in tandem, with no clear upward or downward momentum for the time being.

Released on June 30, the latest Vehicle Inventory Alert Index (VIA) survey by the China Automobile Dealers Association showed that the index for Chinese auto dealers hit 57.2% in June 2026, up 0.6 percentage points year-on-year and down 0.7 percentage points month-on-month, staying above the boom-bust threshold.