China's food-delivery riders are known for long hours — often 14 to 16 hours a day, year-round — but the machines they ride on face an even tougher shift. Covering at least 100 kilometres a day, a standard e-bike battery simply cannot last. Yet riders are rarely seen pushing their scooters. The secret lies in the rows of metal cabinets on street corners, in residential compounds and near delivery hubs, where riders swap a depleted battery for a full one in under a minute, according to a report by the Chinese outlet Huxiu.
The two-wheeler battery-swap industry has quietly become a 10-billion-yuan (about $1.4 billion) business. In 2025, the market for two-wheeler battery swapping reached 14.72 billion yuan (about $2.07 billion), and is projected to grow to 18.35 billion yuan (about $2.58 billion) in 2026, a 24.6% year-on-year increase, the report said. Subscription fees dominate, accounting for 97.9% of revenue, with monthly renewal rates above 80%.
The core users are food-delivery riders. In 2025, there were 4.002 million monthly subscribers, of which 73.6% were delivery riders. The largest player is Tower Energy (Tieta Nengyuan), a subsidiary of China Tower, which held a 23.5% market share in 2024, according to data from Zhiyan Consulting cited by Huxiu. The rest of the market is fragmented among brands such as Zhizu, Zheli and Xiaoha, with over 60% of smaller platforms exiting the market as competition intensifies.
Time is money
Why do riders pay 300 yuan (about $42) a month — 3,600 yuan (about $507) a year, over 10,000 yuan (about $1,408) over three years — when buying their own large-capacity battery would cost around 6,000 yuan (about $845) including electricity, wear and maintenance over the same period? The answer is time.
Since China's 2019 national standard for electric bicycles capped total vehicle weight at 55 kilograms, standard factory-fitted batteries have shrunk to a range of roughly 40 to 50 kilometres. For a rider covering over 100 kilometres a day, that means recharging mid-shift. Charging a battery at home takes two to six hours, during which the rider cannot take orders. Swapping takes seconds. Each extra order earns 5 to 8 yuan (about $0.70 to $1.13), so saving two hours of charging a day can add up to over 1,000 yuan (about $141) a month in extra income.
Safety is another factor. Lithium-ion battery fires from improper home charging, especially in older residential areas and shared rentals, are a recurring problem in China. Swap cabinets offer centralised storage, intelligent monitoring and automatic power cut-off, shifting the safety burden from individual riders to the operating companies.
Locked in, not free to choose
Despite the number of brands, riders cannot easily switch providers. Battery sizes, connectors and communication protocols are not standardised across brands, so choosing one locks a rider into that network. Switching requires modifying the scooter and battery wiring — costly and potentially unsafe. Common complaints include damaged charging connectors, stuck cabinet doors and unreachable customer service, as brands prioritise expanding cabinet coverage over maintenance.
The race for locations is blunt: popular commercial areas and delivery hubs often have six or seven brands' cabinets side by side, while remote areas have none. This uneven distribution clashes with riders' need for coverage along their entire delivery routes. Some cabinets have moved into older residential compounds, where space is scarce and cabinets are squeezed into corners, raising safety concerns.
The swap business illustrates a broader trend in China's electric-mobility ecosystem: the economics of time for gig-economy workers can outweigh the cost of hardware. As the market matures, standardisation and service quality will likely become the next battleground.
