Nio founder and CEO William Li said on Wednesday the EV maker will fall short of its 2025 target for new battery swap stations in China as it shifts resources toward a next-generation system.
The company had aimed to install 2,000 new stations this year, later revising the goal to between 1,800 and 2,000.
As of September 10, Nio has added 488 sites — equivalent to about 27.1% of the target.
Li said that deployment of current fourth-generation stations has been slowed because they cannot be upgraded to support new battery sizes across Nio and its two sub-brands, Onvo and Firefly.
“Mainly because we have to think about deploying the fifth-generation stations,” Li said.
Nio’s current 4th-generation swap stations complete a swap in less than three minutes, use LiDAR, can store up to 23 battery packs, and can provide 480 swaps per day.
“Our fourth-generation stations cannot be modified to support different ones. The size of those battery packs is too different. So our fifth-generation station is a completely new design,” the CEO added.
He added the fifth-generation stations will launch in the first quarter of next year.
The new generation is expected to be more flexible, store more batteries and perform each swap in less time.
Nio has filed patents for modular stations earlier this year that can expand capacity in high-density areas and has considered building larger swap hubs in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Currently, Nio vehicles use 75, 100, 120 and 150 kWh packs, while EVs of the sub-brand Onvo use 65 and 85 kWh batteries, and Firefly’s model a 42.1 kWh pack.
That raises the number of capacities to seven, up from two just three years ago.
Li echoed comments made late last month by co-founder and president Lihong Qin, who said the first engineering units of the new stations are already undergoing verification, with mass rollout set to begin “early next year.”
Lihong described the new system as a milestone for Nio’s infrastructure strategy, saying it will also be compatible with external automakers that have joined its swap alliance.
“The fifth-generation battery swap station is a highly compatible and intelligent battery swap station, and it can be said to be the ultimate goal of our battery swap strategy,” the executive said at the Chengdu Auto Show.
As of Friday, Nio operated 3,488 battery swap stations in China and said its network has delivered more than 85.6 million swaps.
