BEIJING, March 14 Reuters Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio on Thursday signed an agreement with battery giant CATL on a partnership to develop batteries with a longer life as part of efforts to lower overall EV costs.

The partnership will leverage battery technologies from each company seeking to lower the socalled full life circle costs of batteries, key for the operating costs of Nio39;s thousands of battery swapping and charging stations, William Li, Nio39;s founder and CEO, told reporters in Beijing.

Li said the goal was to extend battery usage beyond eight or 10 years.

Nio also announced a cut to monthly rental fees for batteries by up to 33 for Nio users, which works to lower EV purchase costs by as much as 128,000 yuan 17,795.82.

After receiving more than 3 billion from Abu Dhabi investor CYVN Holdings last year, Nio has strived to turn profitable sooner by trimming its workforce and deferring longterm investments to improve efficiency.

The company, however, said it would still keep investing in developing core technologies such as batteries on its own. It has commercialised 150 kilowatt hour kWh semisolidstate batteries for its EVs, manufactured by Beijing Welion New Energy, which have a range of up to 1,000 km 620 miles.

Nio has also invested heavily in infrastructures for battery charging and swapping. It currently has 2,382 battery swapping stations and 21,652 public charging stations, according to Li, adding that the charging has turned profitable for…