Octopus Energy and CATL announced on June 22 a joint venture called "Swaptopus" to build a network of battery-swapping hubs for electric trucks across the UK and Europe, bringing a model already deployed at scale in China to the continent's growing freight sector.
The partnership, unveiled at Octopus Energy's Energy Tech Summit in London, combines CATL's battery technology and experience operating swapping stations in China with Octopus's energy supply, trading, and software capabilities. Under the model, truck drivers pull into a swapping station, remove a depleted battery, install a fully charged one, and return to the road within minutes — eliminating the long wait times associated with charging large truck batteries.
"We'll have a massive stack of batteries at these stations that we can fill with the cheapest electricity at the cheapest times," said Greg Jackson, founder and CEO of Octopus Energy Group. "You can give a truck 500 kWh of electricity, but you took it from the grid when the grid was empty. You're using spare capacity, making electricity cheaper for everybody, cutting the cost of trucking and cleaning it up."
The companies said the first "mega hubs" are expected to open in the UK in 2027, with more than 30 planned by 2035. Each hub is designed to serve thousands of lorries per day. Once fully built out, the network could support more than 300,000 electric trucks and help unlock over £30 billion in private investment, according to the companies. They also noted the network would reduce Europe's reliance on imported oil by replacing diesel with locally generated electricity.
