NIO reveals aggressive plan to add 1,000 swap stations in 2023

Starting in June, NIO will basically maintain a construction rate of 120-150 battery swap stations per month.

(Image credit: NIO)

NIO (NYSE: NIO) unveiled new, aggressive plans to build battery swap stations this year and announced a timeline for the launch of the third generation of the facility.

The company announced today that it plans to add 1,000 battery swap stations in 2023, 2.5 times the 400 it previously announced.

NIO's plan to add 400 battery swap stations in 2023, announced at NIO Day late last year, is far from sufficient, said William Li, the company's founder, chairman and CEO.

NIO will further accelerate the deployment of battery swap stations to allow more customers to experience battery swap services that are more convenient than refueling, he said.

"We have set a new goal of adding 1,000 battery swap stations in 2023, for a cumulative total of more than 2,300 stations by the end of 2023," Li said in an article posted on the NIO App.

Of the 1,000 new stations, about 400 will be located in highway service areas or near highway entrances and exits. The other 600 sites will be deployed in urban areas.

NIO has not added any battery swap stations in the past month, and the number of such facilities in China stood at 1,313 as of January 22, according to data monitored by CnEVPost.

NIO will also increase its efforts to build the facility in third- and fourth-tier cities and counties that have a certain number of users but no battery swap stations, Li said.

NIO's team is already working on all aspects of preparation for this new goal, he said.

Production of NIO's third-generation battery swap stations is now well underway, with mass production expected to begin in April and deployment of battery swap stations to accelerate in May, according to Li.

Starting in June, NIO will basically maintain a construction rate of 120-150 battery swap stations per month, he said.

NIO officially unveiled its third-generation battery swap station at the NIO Day 2022 event on December 24, capable of storing up to 21 battery packs, up from 13 in its previous generation and 5 in the first generation of the facility.

The third-generation battery swap station increases the daily service capacity of a single station to 408 times, a 30 percent increase over the second generation.

Notably, NIO also equipped two LiDARs and two Nvidia Orin chips on the third-generation battery swap station, for a total computing power of 508 TOPS.

To improve the efficiency of site selection, NIO will launch the battery swap station wish list feature on February 28.

"Everyone is welcome to participate in recommending areas for battery swap stations, and we look forward to the help of those who have resources such as sites and power capacity," Li said.

Li said he, along with NIO co-founder and president Qin Lihong and several other executives, met with local owners in several Chinese cities in January, and the topic that came up most often was the construction of battery swap stations.

Here are Li's personal experiences as mentioned by him:

From January 14 to 15, I drove to visit users in Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang and Dalian.

In Northeast China, where the temperature was below -20 degrees Celsius, I used the battery swap service along the highways the whole time and had a great experience, completely different from when I first visited Northeast China users in late 2018.

On the other hand, I realized in the process of talking to people that the northeast region still needs to get several times more battery swap stations to truly allow users to travel worry-free.

During the Chinese New Year holiday, NIO's unlimited free battery swap service at highway service areas was well received, setting a record of 63,000 swaps in a single day.

While this was convenient for everyone's holiday travel, it also exposed the need to improve the battery swap service capacity on popular highway routes during the holiday season.

On the first working day after the Spring Festival holiday, I went to Wenzhou and Taizhou. These two cities already have a lot of battery swap stations, but there are still many blank areas. Cangnan county, for example, already has nearly 150 users, but not a single battery swap station.

Li said these experiences made him feel that the previously announced plan to add 400 battery swap stations this year was far from enough and that the company needed to accelerate the deployment of the facility.

The move is expected to increase the appeal of NIO vehicles and thus boost sales at a time when the Chinese auto industry is generally under pressure.

In a group interview with local media on the second day of NIO Day 2022, Li said on December 25 that the Chinese NEV market will be under pressure in the first half of 2023 on both the supply and demand sides, but the pressure on demand will be a bit greater.

However, Li mentioned at the time that if looking on the bright side, the market could gradually recover in the second quarter or in May.

NIO delivered 8,506 vehicles in January, down 46.22 percent from 15,815 in December and down 11.87 percent from 9,652 in the same month last year. This was due in large part to the seasonal impact of the Chinese New Year holiday.

NIO delivered a total of 122,486 vehicles in 2022, an increase of 34 percent year-on-year.