Mr Viral
Editor’s Note: Nearly seven in 10 new energy vehicles sold globally are tied to China, driving shifts in industries and trade at home and abroad. This is the fourth article in a five-part series exploring China’s electric vehicle boom — and the people building, driving, and fixing its future. Read Parts One, Two, and Three.
SHANGHAI — On a cold winter morning, rows of cars sit tethered to charging stations, dashboard screens glowing softly as battery levels tick upward.
Inside, drivers scroll through their phones, sip from thermoses, or just rest as they wait in the warmth of their cabins. Further back, others wait in the cold, eyes fixed on digital timers counting down the minutes until a charging spot opens up.
This scene could be anywhere — around Beijing’s high-rises, under Shenzhen’s crowded shopping malls, or on the quieter streets of smaller counties or towns. A routine now so familiar it’s easy to forget how recently it began.
In less than a decade, government subsidies made EVs affordable, license plate policies made them accessible, and a nationwide charging network made them practical. Cities rolled out tax incentives, rural areas embraced EV adoption through local campaigns, and automakers pushed out models that appealed to both budget-conscious families and tech-savvy drivers.
Today, over 20 million EVs are on the road, supported by more than 3 million charging stations — numbers no other country comes close to matching.
One early EV adopter from eastern Shandong province tells Sixth Tone it’s hard to even think about switching back to gasoline vehicles. “Take smartphones. Once you get used to swiping and tapping, it’s hard to go back to pressing buttons. Eventually, you stop using them altogether,” says another EV owner from Shanghai.
But the momentum that carried China’s EV boom through its first decade is beginning to slow in its second. Batteries are aging, replacement costs are climbing, and customers are discovering the fine print tucked inside their warranties.
In recent months, frustration among EV owners has grown. Social media and online forums are filled with stories of sudden battery failures, warranty claims rejected over unclear diagnostics, and some repair bills so high they rival the price of buying a new car.
At the root of these frustrations is the battery itself. When it fails, it can’t be repaired, only replaced, often at staggering cost. With expenses mounting, many owners are turning to unauthorized repair shops, where prices are lower, but oversight and accountability are far less certain.
And with millions of batteries now nearing the end of their lifespan, recycling presents an even larger challenge. It’s costly, environmentally risky, and poorly regulated workshops often cut corners, creating hazards that ripple far beyond individual vehicles.
Battery-swapping models, alongside standardized recycling efforts, offer potential pathways toward a more sustainable EV future. But the road forward will hinge on whether these fixes can scale fast enough to match a market that’s already outpacing its safety nets.
Changing lanes
For nearly six years, Li Yanyan had played Beijing’s notorious license plate lottery, hoping each month that her number would finally come up. Without a local plate, her car would face heavy driving restrictions during peak hours in the city center. But with a success rate hovering below 0.13%, the odds were firmly against her.
In 2015, newly married and in urgent need of a car, Li couldn’t wait any longer. Electric vehicles, exempt from the city’s restrictive license plate policies, offered a path forward. “We thought it’d be better to secure a new energy vehicle plate right away,” she recalls. “Who knows if it would become harder to get one later on?”
At the time, Beijing was grappling with crippling traffic congestion and choking air pollution. To ease the strain, authorities introduced strict quotas on fuel-powered car license plates. Driving was restricted based on plate numbers, effectively decreasing the number of gasoline cars on the roads during peak hours.
Similar measures were rolled out in other major cities. In the eastern city of Hangzhou, at its lowest, the odds of winning a license plate through the lottery system were around 0.5% in 2023 — a wait that could stretch over a decade. And in Shanghai, where auctions replaced lotteries, license plates have become some of the most expensive metal sheets in the world, with winning bids hovering around 90,000 yuan ($12,300) in 2024.
Around the same time, local governments flung open the gates for new energy vehicles (NEVs). National subsidies of up to 55,000 yuan, combined with local incentives ranging from 30,000 to 55,000 yuan, dramatically lowered the cost of owning an EV.
Tax breaks added to the appeal when EVs were exempted from the vehicle purchase tax — a cost typically amounting to 10% of the car’s price. With these subsidies and exemptions, Li paid only 230,000 yuan for a BYD e6 in 2015 originally priced at 330,000 yuan.
Across the country, the results were immediate. NEV sales surged to 248,600 units in 2016 — a 119.8% year-on-year increase. Over the past decade, the market expanded more than a hundredfold, and in November, China became the first country to surpass an annual production of 10 million NEVs.
According to a 2024 McKinsey report, 59% of individuals surveyed cited affordability as their primary reason for purchasing an NEV. And 54% of respondents underscored tech advancements as a major draw.
Even budget EVs in China now come packed with features once considered luxury: smartphone controls, AI-assisted navigation, and basic self-driving capabilities are common in models priced under $20,000.
Foreign brands like Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz are scrambling to keep up, rolling out quicker software updates and playful features — like in-car karaoke — to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving market.
Li has become a firm believer in the technology. “Gasoline cars honestly feel outdated now,” she said. “Like they belong to the last century.”
However, the same report found that while almost two-thirds of car owners in 2023 said they would consider buying an EV for their next vehicle, that number represented a 6% drop from the previous year.
Much of the decline stems from dissatisfaction in smaller cities and rural areas, where charging infrastructure remains underdeveloped and ownership costs are harder to predict.
For Li Youran, who drives an eight-year-old BYD electric car in Qingdao in the eastern Shandong province, charging is still a daily calculation. Without a charger at home, she relies entirely on public stations, where costs vary widely depending on the time of day.
In off-peak hours — typically late mornings and early afternoons — she pays around 10 yuan for a full charge, compared to 30 yuan during peak hours. But cheaper rates come with their own challenges. “It’s common to wait over an hour for a spot because ride-hailing drivers all gather during off-peak times,” she says.
According to Li Yanyan, public chargers were hard to find even in Beijing back in 2015, and charging required the car to be fully turned off.
“I’d wait in the cold for hours, just sitting there while the battery filled up,” she recalls. Six months later, she installed a home charging station for 2,000 yuan, becoming the first resident in her community to do so. It costs her about 200 yuan per month to use — significantly cheaper than fueling a gasoline car.
In 2015, Beijing had just 21,000 public and private charging stations. Now, that number has surged to 380,700 charging piles, with 65,200 newly added in 2024 alone.
For longer trips, both women admit they just rent gasoline cars instead. “On holidays, highway chargers are completely packed. It’s just easier to rent a fuel car and not worry about running out of power,” explains Li Youran.
Yet, as EVs grow older, it’s not the long lines at chargers that worry owners most — it’s what happens when the battery begins to fade.
Terminal point
The range on Li Yanyan’s EV suddenly dropped by half in October 2023. The car had been lightly used, clocking only 60,000 kilometers. Luckily, it happened just two months before her eight-year battery warranty expired.
Back then, a service center estimated a replacement would cost 12,000 yuan. But when she brought her car in, technicians told her she qualified for a free replacement after assessing the battery’s cycle count. The process took nearly a month, but a substitute car was provided in the meantime.
“Many people online said they wouldn’t replace the battery. Policies at service centers also seem inconsistent. I went in ready to pay,” Li says. “But the process turned out to be much smoother than I expected.”
Not every EV owner is as fortunate. Most EV batteries in China come with an eight-year or 150,000-kilometer warranty, whichever comes first. These guarantees promise replacements if battery capacity falls below a certain threshold — often around 70%.
But the fine print varies across manufacturers, and enforcement is far from consistent. When warranties expire, replacement costs are high, policies around battery degradation remain murky, and navigating repairs often means long waits.
Frustrations over battery costs and unclear warranties have flooded social media in recent months, with domestic media chiming in to highlight some extreme cases. In one instance, the owner of a domestic EV brand spent 80,000 yuan to replace a damaged battery — nearly half the car’s price. In another, a Polestar 2 owner received a staggering 540,000 yuan bill, far exceeding the Volvo sub-brand’s original cost.
Fang Yi, a 35-year-old medical professional from Beijing who bought a Tesla Model X for around 1 million yuan in 2015, faced a similar dilemma. In early 2024, shortly after the car’s eight-year battery warranty expired, it stopped charging.
At the official Tesla service center, Fang was told repairs would involve dismantling her car, sending the battery to a factory in Shanghai, and incurring staggering costs at every step. “The staff seemed confused that I even wanted to repair it,” recalls Fang. “But I love this car. Does a dead battery mean I have to throw the whole thing away?”
Instead, Fang turned to an independent repair shop recommended by a fellow Tesla owner. For a fraction of what an official repair would have cost, they replaced a few battery packs and got her car running again.
Such private repair shops have become an essential fallback for EV owners facing prohibitive repair costs and slow turnaround times at official centers. Fang estimates that over 60% of Tesla owners she knows now rely on third-party services.
“Something that costs 4,000 to 5,000 yuan at an official center might only cost 1,000 to 2,000 yuan at these smaller workshops,” she says. Since that repair, Fang hasn’t returned to an official Tesla service center.
Part of the problem lies in the sheer cost of the batteries themselves. “The battery alone can account for 40% to 80% of an electric vehicle’s total price, with variations in battery model and batch further influencing the cost,” says Zhang Zheming, a researcher at the Shenzhen Automotive Research Institute of Beijing Institute of Technology.
“When replacing a battery, in addition to the battery’s price, you also have labor costs, installation service fees, and other related expenses,” he adds.
Faced with aging batteries and rising costs, automakers, policymakers, and tech firms are racing to adapt. From swappable batteries to streamlined recycling networks and smarter cell designs, new strategies aim to cut costs, extend battery life, and curb environmental risks.
Free of charge
Unlike traditional charging, where drivers must wait to replenish their batteries, swapping stations allow EV owners to exchange a depleted battery for a fully charged one in minutes.
The process is largely automated, with machines lifting vehicles and replacing battery packs from underneath, with minimal human intervention.
NIO, one of China’s major EV makers, opened its first battery-swapping station in 2018 and now operates over 2,700 stations across the country. These stations offer a unique model: customers can purchase an EV without buying the battery outright, opting instead for a rental system that reduces upfront costs.
Wang, a 35-year-old from Shanghai, bought her NIO ES8 in 2020 for around 400,000 yuan. Beyond subsidies and tax breaks, the promise of lifetime free battery swaps was a major selling point at the time — an option NIO has since phased out for new customers.
The convenience was even more apparent during a recent road trip. While charging stations were packed with long queues and occasional arguments, Wang breezed through swapping stations every 100 kilometers. “By the time my husband finished the swap, I was back from the restroom, and we were ready to go.”
For current NIO owners without lifetime free swaps, battery-swapping fees depend on the energy transferred during the swap. For instance, if 20 kilowatt-hours (kWh), roughly enough for 100 kilometers of driving, is delivered, a fee of 30 yuan is added.
CATL, the country’s leading EV battery maker, is also expanding its battery-swapping infrastructure. In 2022, it launched EVOGO, a modular battery-swapping service for passenger cars.
By 2025, CATL aims to operate over 1,000 stations across 30 cities, with a long-term goal of reaching 30,000 stations nationwide. Its next-generation battery packs, designed with varying chemical compositions for different ranges and vehicle types, aim to standardize battery technology across the industry.
Speaking with Sixth Tone on conditions of anonymity, an EVOGO brand manager said the real commercial value of battery-swapping lies in economy vehicles. “While NIO has excelled with high-end cars, our strategy focuses on lowering costs and providing a safe, convenient choice for mass-market consumers, including ride-hailing drivers,” says the manager.
The approach aims to reduce the upfront cost of battery ownership, making EVs more accessible.
But while battery-swapping eases short-term ownership concerns, the question of what happens to aging and retired batteries remains one of the industry’s most pressing long-term challenges.
In 2023 alone, retired EV batteries amounted to an estimated 580,000 tons. By 2027, that figure is expected to surge to 1.14 million tons.
According to a report by the Development Research Center of the State Council, over 75% of retired batteries were still being handled by unqualified workshops as of late 2023, raising concerns about environmental hazards and safety risks.
“The biggest challenge we face right now is collaborating with dismantling plants to source batteries,” Zhang Xiaobing, a sustainability expert at Brunp Recycling Technology, CATL’s recycling subsidiary, tells Sixth Tone. “Many dismantling plants now receive fewer batteries, as they are often resold for secondary use or dismantled at unregulated workshops before reaching official recycling facilities.”
Smaller workshops, he explains, often perform basic disassembly, repurpose batteries for secondary use in vehicles, or sell crushed battery powder to manufacturers for further processing. With lower environmental and recycling compliance costs, these workshops can offer several thousand yuan more than official recycling channels, according to domestic reports.
Without standardized recycling procedures, safety and environmental risks loom large. Crushing batteries releases toxic dust, fluorinated compounds pollute the air, and untreated wastewater from metal smelting seeps into soil and water, warns Zhang Zheming, the Shenzhen-based researcher.
Currently, most recycled materials come from industrial waste during battery production and batteries collected from market channels. At Brunp, these materials are processed and reused, with recovery rates reaching 99.6% for nickel, cobalt, and manganese, and 91% for lithium.
However, price wars and market overcapacity have squeezed recycling profits in recent years. “Sometimes, recycled materials end up costing more than newly manufactured ones, forcing many recycling businesses to halt operations,” says Zhang, calling for stricter government oversight.
“The path forward won’t rely on just one solution — it will require alignment between consumers, businesses, and policymakers. The promise of China’s EV boom still holds, but the true cost is yet to be settled.”
Editor: Apurva.
(Header image: VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone)
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