Nio has reached 100 million battery swaps, marking the milestone with a new advertisement that compares its swap technology with conventional charging.
The 90-second spot opens with a Tesla driver waiting for his vehicle to charge when a Nio ES8 arrives at an adjacent battery swap station.
Tesla first demonstrated battery swapping technology in June 2013, when CEO Elon Musk showed a Model S completing a battery swap in 90 seconds — faster than filling a gas tank.
The company opened a pilot station in Harris Ranch, California, in 2014.
Nio‘s new ad depicts a Tesla Model 3 driver waiting at a charger as a Nio owner exchanges batteries in under three minutes at a fourth generation swap station in China.
Below is the full ad released by Nio on Friday.
Tesla’s Abandoned Bet
Tesla abandoned the project by 2015, with Musk later saying customers preferred Supercharging to battery swapping.
The company pivoted to expanding its Supercharger network, which now includes more than 77,000 stalls globally.
Nio took the opposite approach.
The Chinese EV maker opened its first battery swap station in May 2018 and has since built the world’s largest network, positioning the technology as a solution to charging anxiety and a way to reduce upfront vehicle costs through battery-as-a-service (BaaS) program.
Under the program, customers buy the vehicle and lease the battery, allowing them to switch between pack sizes as their needs change.
Network Scale
As of Sunday morning, Nio had completed 100,176,290 battery swaps globally, according to the company’s website.
The Shanghai-based company operates 3,729 battery swap stations and 28,035 charging piles in China.
Nio said on Friday that its customers have cumulatively consumed 5.28 billion kWh of electricity through battery swap stations.
The company reported an average of more than 100,000 battery swaps per day when it announced the 90-million milestone in October.
According to data tracker nioswaps.com, the record of daily swaps was reached last October with 145,820 swaps in a single day, coinciding with China’s weeklong National Day holiday.
Nio reached 90 million swaps 99 days after surpassing 80 million, while the jump from 70 million to 80 million took 101 days.
Of the 100 million swaps completed, more than 250,000 have been performed across Nio‘s European battery swap network — representing about 0.2% of the total.
Across five European markets, Nio currently has 60 stations. Last year, it closed a station in Denmark — as first reported by EV.
Missed 2025 Guidance
In 2021, Nio announced plans for more than 4,000 battery swap stations worldwide by the end of 2025, including around 1,000 outside China.
Those targets were later scaled back as deployment progressed more slowly than expected, particularly overseas.
Nio had originally planned to install 2,000 new stations in 2025 across China, a goal later revised to between 1,800 and 2,000.
In early September, founder and CEO William Li said the company would fall short as it reallocates resources toward its next-generation system.
By the end of 2024, Nio operated 2,995 battery swap stations in China. Last year, 681 stations were added, meeting only 34.1% of the original guidance.
2026 Plans
In an internal letter to staff on New Year’s Day, Li wrote that the company plans to add more than 1,000 new swap stations in 2026, with total stations exceeding 4,600 by year-end.
In the first five weeks of 2026, Nio has opened fewer than 60 battery swap stations in China.
Deployment of current fourth-generation stations has slowed because they cannot be upgraded to support new battery sizes across Nio and its two sub-brands, Onvo and Firefly, according to Li.
The fourth-generation stations, launched in China in June 2024, complete each swap in 144 seconds and store up to 23 batteries.
Nio‘s fifth-generation stations are currently being tested in China with mass production planned to begin in the second quarter.
The company has not yet disclosed swap times or battery storage capacity for the new generation.
CATL Competition
Nio operates the largest battery swap network in China, but competitors are working to catch up.
Battery giant CATL launched its “Choco-Swap” ecosystem in December 2024, unveiling two standardized battery models for use across multiple automakers.
Unlike Nio, which built its network around its own vehicles, CATL is partnering with multiple carmakers from day one to ensure broader compatibility.
The first models to use Choco Swap stations included GAC’s Aion S sedan, Hongqi’s E-QM5, and SAIC’s Roewe D7.
CATL‘s stations can automatically replace a depleted battery in 70 to 80 seconds — about half of Nio‘s time.
The company announced in late November that it reached 1,000 stations one month ahead of schedule and raised its 2026 target from 2,500 to more than 3,000 stations across 140 cities.
For perspective, CATL plans to deploy around 3,000 stations in two years, while Nio has installed approximately 3,600 stations over seven years.
European Expansion Slows
Nio opened a plant outside Budapest, Hungary, in September 2022 to assemble battery swap stations for Europe. The company opened its first European station in Lier, Norway, earlier that year.
By November 2023, Nio had doubled its European network to 30 stations and reached 50 by July 2024. However, expansion has slowed since then, with only 11 stations added.
As Nio expands beyond China with its Firefly and Onvo brands and partners with local distributors, it remains uncertain whether battery swap infrastructure will be available in new European markets.
The decision is left to each country’s distributor, and no European partner has announced the opening of a station as of Sunday morning.
