Nio Inc.‘s founder and CEO William Li said over the weekend that the company plans to add 1,000 stations annually to its battery swap network through 2028.
Speaking during a 24-hour-long livestream for the company’s newly unveiled flagship SUV, the ES9, Li reaffirmed that Nio expects to end 2026 with between 4,500 and 4,600 battery-swap stations in operation.
The lower end of that range would imply fewer than 1,000 new stations this year — Nio ended 2025 with 3,676, which indicates that a year-end total of 4,500 would represent roughly 824 additions.
This is also the first time Li has guided to a range rather than a firm target exceeding 4,600.
“The future plan is roughly this: by the end of this year, the total will reach about 4,500-4,600,” he stated. “Then starting next year, we’ll add around 1,000 stations each year. So next year and the year after, the pace will basically stay at 1,000 annually.”
Li had reiterated in March that the 1,000-station annual goal remained unchanged.
The year-end target was roughly consistent with the guidance first given in a New Year’s Day letter to staff, in which the CEO wrote that the plan called for more than 1,000 new stations and a total exceeding 4,600 by year-end.
Pace and Fifth Gen Stations
As of Monday, Nio operated 3,843 battery swap stations in China, having added 167 since the start of the year — a pace of approximately 40 stations per month.
The company ended 2025 with 3,676 stations after adding 681 during the year — well below its initial target of 1,800 to 2,000 new sites.
Much of the 2026 deployment is expected to be back-loaded.
Roughly 450 of the planned stations are expected to open in the fourth quarter alone — nearly half the full-year target in a single quarter.
The acceleration hinges on the rollout of fifth-generation stations, which Nio plans to deploy in a pioneer batch of five to 10 units between May and June, with mass deployment now scheduled for the third quarter.
The timeline has slipped repeatedly — from a trial run before Christmas 2025 to the first quarter, then the second, and most recently to July or August.
Network Across China
Li also provided an update on the network’s geographic footprint.
“There are already more than 1,000 stations along highways,” he said. “At the county level, nine provincial-level regions have already achieved full county coverage with battery swap stations.”
Nio first reached 1,200 county-level regions in September 2025 — three months behind its original June deadline.
The company confirmed at that time that county-level coverage had been achieved in Beijing, Shanghai, Macau, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Tianjin, Chongqing and Hainan.
Li indicated the company now expects to reach nationwide county-level coverage within approximately two years, with limited exceptions.
“I estimate that in another two years or so, we should be able to achieve nationwide county-level coverage, except for a very small number of places,” the CEO stated, warning that “some areas in Xinjiang and Tibet are simply too remote.”
Onvo Compatibility
Separately, Onvo brand chief Fei Shen said the number of battery swap stations compatible with the sub-brand’s vehicles will exceed 3,300 by the end of 2026 — a figure that would represent a significant expansion from the state of the network less than six months ago.
The availability of Onvo-compatible batteries at Nio‘s swap stations has been a persistent issue since the sub-brand launched deliveries in September 2024.
The problem stems from a mismatch in battery specifications: Nio‘s network was originally built around 75 kWh and 100 kWh packs for the main brand, while Onvo uses smaller 60 kWh and 85 kWh cells, requiring stations to stock additional inventory.
In early December 2025, Onvo announced a “national battery-swap station battery doubling plan” to add more than 8,000 battery packs across the network by mid-January.
The sub-brand missed the target twice.
By January 17, it had deployed 6,680 packs — just 83.5% of the goal — and quietly pushed back the deadline to the end of the month, missing it again.
In his latest comments, Shen said the initiative has since been completed.
“At the beginning of this year, Onvo completed its nationwide battery-doubling plan for swap stations, adding more than 8,000 batteries and delivering more than double the convenience and experience,” the brand chief stated.
He added that “by the end of this year, the number of Onvo-compatible battery swap stations nationwide will exceed 3,300, bringing users a continuously leading pure EV travel experience.”
The 3,300-station target would mean that roughly 70% of Nio‘s projected year-end network of approximately 4,600 stations will carry Onvo-compatible batteries — up from fewer than 2,300 that were accessible to the sub-brand’s customers in December 2025.
Shen, a longtime Nio veteran who previously led the company’s energy division, was appointed to run Onvo in early 2025 after predecessor Alan Ai stepped down following consecutive missed delivery targets.
110 Million Swaps
Nio‘s battery swap network surpassed 110 million cumulative swaps in early May, the latest in a series of rapidly accelerating milestones since the first swap took place in 2018.
The company opened its first battery swap station in Shenzhen in June 2018, when public fast-charging infrastructure in China was sparse and peak output rarely exceeded 60 kilowatts.
The company reached 100 million swaps on February 6 — meaning it added roughly 10 million swaps in approximately three months.
The implied average is approximately 110,000 swaps per day, a sharp increase from the roughly 90,900 daily average recorded in mid-2025.
Daily records have been climbing steadily.
Nio first broke the 100,000 daily barrier in October 2024, then hit 145,395 during the 2025 National Day holiday.
During the 2026 Chinese New Year, the company broke the 150,000 barrier for the first time and went on to set consecutive records, peaking at 177,627 swaps on February 21 — also becoming the first time Nio provided one million swaps in less than a week.
