NIO announced that it has installed its 700th battery swap station in China, hitting its updated annual target of 700 stations (previously 500) by the end of 2021 ahead of schedule.
Since the launch of the second-generation Power Swap Station 2.0 in April, the expansion of the network significantly accelerated and the network more than doubled.
According to the Chinese manufacturer, cumulatively the network provided over 5.3 million battery swaps, compared to 4 millions as of September 29, 2021.
NIO says also that currently there are 258 NIO cars on the roads per one station and that over 42% live within three kilometers from their nearest battery swap station.
"NIO is accelerating its deployment of battery swapping stations in urban areas. At the end of November, 42.34% of NIO users live within three kilometers from their nearest battery swapping station. The "Station to Vehicle" ratio drops to 258, meaning on average each battery swap station serves 258 cars."
By 2025, the company intends to have 4,000 battery swap stations (including 1,000 outside China).
The battery swap network is not the only one, as NIO installs also charging infrastructure. Let's see the numbers:
- 700 Power Swap stations (including 150 along highways)
- 534 fast charging stations with 3,020 stalls
- 600 destination charging stations with 3,319 stalls
- access to over 430,000 third-party charging stalls
It seems that this year the company focuses on battery swapping rather than fast charging. In the recent few years, we saw a growing interest among Chinese manufacturers to also build battery swap infrastructure for their cars. We do not see such interest outside of China.
It will be very interesting to see which model will turn out to be better in the end. Tesla, for example, sticks with fast charging, after conducting a small battery swap pilot with the Tesla Model S in California several years ago.
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