On 13 June 2026, eleven Chinese ministries led by the Ministry of Transport and the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued the ‘Implementation Plan for Promoting the Large-scale Application of New Energy Heavy Trucks’. The headline targets: 40% new-energy penetration of heavy-truck sales by 2030, and a 1.6-million-vehicle new-energy heavy-truck parc (roughly 20% of the fleet) by the same date.

The plan’s operational content matters more than its targets. It explicitly encourages vehicle-battery separation and battery-leasing business models — state endorsement of the swap/BaaS architecture; requires full-lifecycle battery traceability systems inside swap stations (a safety-regulation layer the industry had been asking how to build); and commits to making charging and swapping stations standard components of road infrastructure — the phrase that turns energy retail into public works. Application scenarios are to expand across logistics, mining and ports.

For Europe, the document is the policy receipt for everything our China coverage tracks: when eleven ministries write swap into road-infrastructure law, the build rates CATL posts (305 Qiji truck stations in 2025) stop being corporate ambition and become programme delivery. The European contrast is instructive: the EU’s CO₂ framework targets manufacturers’ sales mix, while China’s plan names vehicles, batteries, stations and business models in one integrated industrial policy. Two different theories of transition — both now in writing.