Although Nio‘s battery swap stations along highways provide four times as many services as on normal days, the length of a single service is still under 12 minutes.
(Image credit: Nio)
During China’s golden week holidays, the shortage of charging stations along highways is always a hot topic of discussion, and it’s not uncommon to see some EV owners fighting over chargers.
For Nio (NYSE: NIO) owners, it looks like they won’t have to worry about that too much, and one company executive shared some numbers to prove it.
Battery swap is a far superior replenishment option for EVs on long-distance trips, saving a lot of time compared to charging, Nio’s vice president of power business, Shen Fei, wrote on Weibo last night.
Shen shared three charts to show how Nio’s battery swap network performed during the just-ended National Day holiday, which ran from September 29 to October 6 this year.
During that holiday period, despite a significant increase in battery swap services offered by Nio, the average time it took owners to get a fully charged battery was almost comparable to normal days, he said.
Including queuing time, the overall time from the time an owner placed an order roughly 200 meters from a battery swap station to the time the vehicle completed the battery swap was around nine to 10 minutes, Shen said
On the highway, even though Nio’s battery swap stations offered about four times as many services as on normal days, the overall time of a single service was less than 12 minutes, he said.
During the just-concluded National Day holiday, Nio’s battery swap network provided an average of 70,000 to 80,000 services per day, according to Shen.
On October 5, Nio provided a record 78,233 battery swap services, with sites located along highways providing 25,021, according to one of the charts shared by Shen.
Apart from the battery swap services, Shen also shared the numbers of Nio owners using the charging piles.
When considering only the length of the charge from start to finish, Nio owners took about 30 to 40 minutes on average, Shen said, adding that the charge would have been a bit faster if they had used Nio’s charging piles.
Currently, several mainstream extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) models average 50 to 60 minutes per charge on Nio charging piles, he said.
As of October 8, Nio had 1,937 battery swap stations in China, including 574 along highways, data monitored by CnEVPost showed.
Nio aims to see its number of battery swap stations in China reach 2,300 by the end of this year, with 1,000 of those added this year.
The company also has 3,224 charging stations, including fast-charging stations as well as slower-charging destination charging stations, providing a cumulative total of 18,839 charging piles and open to all EV models.
(Nio’s vice president of power business Shen Fei shared charts to show how Nio’s battery swap network performed during the just-ended National Day holiday.)
