Nio Power, the energy arm of Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio, has officially relocated its headquarters to Wuhan, establishing a base in the city’s Optics Valley.
The move to Wuhan came amid a 1.5 billion yuan ($209 million) strategic investment from the city government, announced in May 2024, and the ramp-up of a new 20,000-square-metre manufacturing facility that began trial production late last year.
The site has an annual capacity of more than 1,000 battery swap stations and is expected to become Nio’s largest global energy manufacturing hub.
Nio Power, established in May 2017, oversees the company’s charging, swapping, energy storage, and related service networks.
However, the company is falling significantly behind its 2025 target of building between 1,800 and 2,000 new battery swap stations in China.
Nio completed only 384 new sites in the first half of the year — just 21.3% of the lower end of its annual guidance and 19.2% of the high end.
The company opened an average of just 15 stations per week in the first six months of the year, but would now need to complete 54 stations per week to hit the low-end target, and 62 per week to meet the upper bound.
Nio launched its first battery swap station in May 2018. Its 1,000th site was completed in July 2022, followed by the 2,000th in October 2023 and the 3,000th in January this year.
The Wuhan plant produced its 100th swap station at the end of 2024 and targets an annual output of over 1,000 stations and projected revenue of 2 billion yuan ($279 million).
Over the weekend, Nio completed over 80 million battery swaps in China — 110 days after reaching the 70 million mark.
Globally, Nio operates seven battery swap station factories, including six in China and one assembly site in Hungary. However, only ten new stations have been added in Europe over the past 12 months.
Fei Shen, formerly Senior Vice President of Nio Power, was appointed head of Nio’s budget sub-brand Onvo on April 1 following the departure of Alan Ai after missed sales targets.
Shen joined Nio in 2015 as its 274th employee and previously worked at Sieyuan Electric from 2007 to 2015 as Vice General Manager and Product Director.
Commenting on the relocation in a social media post, Shen wrote: “Nio Power’s headquarters has moved to a new home. I couldn’t make it to the site and didn’t have time to visit.”
He shared a photo featuring what appeared to be the Onvo logo and added, “A thoughtful former colleague sent me a photo — a big Onvo logo and an upward path.”
“I hope Onvo, Nio, and Firefly all continue to rise, and I also wish that all our users and everyone who cares for and supports us walks an upward path too,” he added.
