Top 3 SPAC targets - EV battery charging and swapping. The fossil fuel supply crisis may be set to ease in the coming months with a deal to end the Iran conflict already on the books. But, the shot in the arm that the electrification trend received from this year's events is likely to endure, at least in the short term. Global EV sales are now expected to increase +11% year-on-year in 2026, according to Semafor, and Reuters reported that, in Europe in particular, new EV registrations rose +34% in May compared to last year. Much of this supply has come in the form of cheaper EVs from China, which saw its EV exports soar +73% year-on-year this month. The trepidation about China's burgeoning share of the market was the thesis for a Top 3 report last month that highlighted private Western-based EV manufacturers that could be boosted by a SPAC deal in an effort to turn that tide. But, the EV charging networks benefit regardless of where the particular EV came from. One new wrinkle is that the market for EV charging is beginning to settle into winners-and-losers phase and this stands to be at least partially disrupted by battery swapping players. Electrify America. There are still moves to be made within the charging space, however. In the US, Tesla's (NASDAQ:TSLA) network is the market leader by a wide margin as it runs about 52.5% of the fast-charging ports in the country with no other player holding a greater-than-8% share, according to State of Charge. This puts Tesla in a position where it likely cannot increase its market share much further without drawing anti-monopoly scrutiny, but there is plenty room for consolidation at the bottom to form a strong second-place challenger. Right now, second place is held by Electrify America, with 7.9% of the charging point market, followed closely by de-SPACs EVGo (NASDAQ:EVGO) and ChargePoint (NYSE:CHPT) with 7.1% and 6.6%, respectively. One or both of these competitors could in fact be a tempting acquisition target for Electrify America, if it were to gain a cash infusion and public capital to work with for deal-making. Back in 2017, Electrify America unveiled plans to invest $2 billion in charging infrastructure over a 10-year period and the final phase of this plan is set to end in December 2026. As of January, this effort had landed Electrify America with about 1,000 charging stations, that host about 5,350 fast-charging ports by State of Charge's count. All of this means that the Reston, Virginia-based company is at an important juncture for deciding what to do next. That applies to its capital plans as well, as it last raised equity capital in 2022 in a move that brought in $450 million at a $2.45 billion valuation. Its investor group also includes several strategic players that might be willing to participate in a PIPE. These include German industrial and automotive giants Siemens (DE:SIE) and Volkswagen (DE:VOW), each of which would continue to gain synergistic benefits from Electrify America taking the next step. Ample. As charging networks fill the gaps and provide enough station density to make it easy for more drivers to make the switch, battery swapping is the next big thing and it provides some advantages over charging. Battery swapping customers don't need to wait for even a "fast" 15-minute charge. This is particularly attractive for fleets of commercial vehicles where those charging times stack up into hours of lost productivity with vehicles. California-based Ample has brought its own battery swapping model to a variety of fleets around the world, including Uber (NYSE:UBER) and Spanish energy conglomerate Repsol as well as Mitsubishi's bus division in Japan and Yamato Transport, the largest logistics company in the country. To embed itself deeper into these networks, Ample currently offers fleet customers to install its infrastructure with clients for no upfront costs. Instead, the customers pay only for the energy used and the batteries. This model also offers the benefit of companies avoiding battery degradation on heavily-used vehicles as they will always have access to a fresh battery. Ample has not publicly announced any funding since pulling in a $25 million strategic investment from Mitsubishi in 2024 following its $160 million Series C in 2021. That suggests a high degree of financial discipline for the startup, but a SPAC deal could open up many more possibilities for it. Spiro. Battery swapping isn't only getting big in highly developed markets, it's increasingly becoming the norm in Africa. Spiro is the first-mover on that continent, as it operates in seven countries in East and West Africa, powering 2,500 swapping stations across this expanse. It also produces the electric motorcycles that its network is designed for, and it has sold about 100,000 such motorcycles to date. There are a variety of reasons why battery swapping can be a better option for developing markets. First, charging stations require constant connection to a strong grid, which is not always available in places like Africa. Second, the swapping stations can become a tool of grid resiliency themselves. Put together, the dozens of spare batteries waiting to be swapped can effectively serve as an energy storage platform for the grid. Chinese swapping firms have already experimented with setups that allow them to sell power back to the grid at peak times as a side benefit the station can monetize. In Spiro's case, its growth has been so swift that private capital has been all too happy to pour in for it. It raised $100 million in October 2025, then picked up another $50 million in debt funding in February and oversold a capital raise earlier this month that pulled in $270 million. That presumably will leave the company satiated from a cash standpoint for some time. But, this is nonetheless a remarkable capital achievement for an African startup and any company that can deploy that amount of capital in that short of a time has plenty of reasons to be public. After all, what if it had that kind of cash at its fingertips without the constant dilution and road shows for private rounds? Its current investor base also suggests that there would be broad appetite for exposure to one of the rare high-growth African clean energy plays. Spiro's latest rounds included participation from institutions ranging from Impact Fund Denmark to China-based New Trails Capital. The latest wave of new SPACs have also included a number of teams specifically looking at Africa and other developing market opportunities.

Ample has been developing its own modular battery pack to be compatible with various EV platforms to become 'drop-in replacements' for the original batteries fitted by respective car makers.