Xiaomi invests in a battery-swapping company, but it's far from entering the market

According to a corporate listing in China, Zhejiang Xinglixing New Energy Technology Co., Ltd has registered a new capital inflow and shareholder restructuring. The investment comes from a Xiaomi-backed company named Hanxing Venture Capital, bumping up the company's capital from RMB 100 million ($14.8 million) to RMB 130 million ($19.3 million).

Now, Hanxing Venture Capital holds about 23% of Zhejiang Xinglixing New Energy Technology's stake and represents Xiaomi's first investment into the battery-swapping business.

Notably, the battery-swapping operator is a new startup, first registered in February this year and focusing on battery swap equipment, power batteries, station operations, battery asset management and related services.

Now this certainly doesn't mean Xiaomi is on the verge of releasing a car with swappable battery. Zhejiang Xinglixing New Energy Technology firm is just a regional operator, trying to leverage existing battery-swapping technologies for EVs and providing services instead of actively working on new technology.

On its part Xiaomi just unveiled the SkyNomad EREV duo, so it's still far from adding a third type of car to its lineup. The kind of manufacturing capacity to maintain that is still not present.

So why the investment then? Well, the EV maker is likely looking for a strategic positioning in the battery-swapping market and perhaps keeping its options open for the future.

Other manufacturers like NIO, SAIC and CATL are the real pioneers in the segment, especially NIO, which aims to build the largest battery-swapping network on the planet. Only time will tell if Xiaomi will emerge as a viable competitor in that segment as well, but it's not going to be soon.

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