Quick Summary
GAC Aion has officially launched its Aion RT Super, an electric car that lets you swap batteries – in 99-seconds.
Rent the battery for £43/month and you can swap out for a fresh one when needed, for the fastest way to keep charged up.
Battery charging and range are still the choke points for electric cars being unstoppable and it looks like GAC Aion may have fixed the issue.
This newly launched car uses CATL’s “chocolate-swap” battery tech to change out the car’s battery for a freshly charged one in just 99 seconds.
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This Aion RT Super, which launched on April 8, offers a subscription fee for the batteries, charged at around £43 per month.
While this subscription has a 1,865 miles per month limit, there is a higher paid option that gets you unlimited mileage, if needed, which is charged between £50 and £70 depending on battery size.
The car itself comes with premium specs including features like panoramic sunroof, adaptive cruise control, electric tailgate, sentry mode, intelligent high beam assist LED headlights, power-folding heated mirrors and more.
Inside the car offers an 8.88-inch full LCD instrument cluster as well as a 14.6-inch central control display with built-in infotainment. You also have electric adjustable heated and cooled leather seats, heat-pump air-conditioning and an ultra-fibre leather steering wheel.
The battery, at 54 kWh, is good for an impressive 313 miles and charges from 30% to 80% in 26 minutes. Although with that swap out it’s just a 99-second wait before you can enjoy the 0-100kph acceleration in 7.5 seconds.
There are currently over 3,000 swap stations, in China at least, with the plan to hit 30,000 and to open franchises in the future.
(Image credit: Aion)
Aion RT Super: price and availability
Despite having some impressive features, and that unique battery swap option, the Aion RT Super pricing starts at just £9,560.
The catch? You’ll need to pay that and then the battery rental price on top. That said, when you consider the offset of fuel this still works out very affordable.
