Nio's Little Electric Car Has A Cool Party Trick: Upgradeable Range

This isn't the first Nio to have swappable batteries but the ability to upgrade is something few EVs have.

Nio Firefly 2025

Photo by: Kevin Williams/InsideEVs

Nico DeMattia

By: Nico DeMattia

Oct 19, at 3:04pm ET

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Over-the-air updates revolutionized the car ownership experience, allowing vehicles to get vastly upgraded features while they sit idle in a driveway overnight. Nio is bringing that idea to car hardware too, launching a bigger battery pack for its Firefly city car that current owners will be able to upgrade to.

Current Nio Firefly owners have a 42.1 kWh battery pack, good for 420 km (261 miles) on China's admittedly very forgiving CLTC cycle. Now Nio is introducing the car with a larger 60 kWh battery. Additionally, existing customers who want the 60 kWh battery can pay to upgrade, a Chinese blogger reported, citing comments Firefly's head of brand marketing made at an owners event.

Once the new one is installed, they'll have 560 km (348 miles) of CLTC-rated range, which is a huge upgrade. This new battery, sourced from CATL, is dimensionally the same as the old one, according to reports, just with a different lithium-ion chemistry. Instead of the older lithium-iron phosphate chemistry, the 60 kWh pack will reportedly use a nickel-cobalt-manganese chemistry, which helps explain how Nio was able to increase capacity without changing the pack's footprint.

Nio Firefly EV - official photos (11)

Photo by: Nio

Swappable batteries aren't new. Nio has been able to swap batteries in its vehicles for years, through its car-wash like stations. Typically, the swap is good for a quick recharge, allowing you to get a fresh battery in minutes rather than spending a half-hour or more to charge. The automaker's battery-as-a-service subscription has also allowed Nio owners to choose bigger or smaller packs at the swapping station to suit their needs.

The idea of being able to upgrade to a larger pack is probably welcome news for Firefly owners, who didn't have a huge amount of range to begin with. And I'm sure there are more than a few owners of lower-range Chevy Bolts and the like in the U.S. who wouldn't mind stepping up to a larger battery with more capacity.

But this concept doesn't exist in any meaningful way in the States. Here, battery swaps are typically a last-resort measure, reserved for when a pack becomes toast. There was a time when Tesla offered larger-capacity battery replacements for the Roadster. But generally your vehicle is stuck with the battery capacity and range that it came with, and both of those numbers decline as you pack on the miles and charging sessions.

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One outlier in the West seems to be Ferrari—not exactly the everyman's car like the Firefly. When Ferrari unveiled the Luce EV, it specified that the module design will allow owners to benefit from newer chemistries and battery improvements over time.

It's not clear how much the upgrade will cost, nor whether Nio owners will be able to rent the larger pack or buy it outright. The upgrades will likely happen at Nio's battery-swapping stations, which cars from its Firefly sub-brand recently gained access to thanks to a newer station design. More details will reportedly come out during an October 23 launch event.

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