Five years after Tesla trialed battery swapping with the Model S — an idea the company later abandoned — Chinese EV maker Nio became the first company to invest heavily in the technology.
Nio opened its first battery swap station in May 2018 and has since added nearly 3,700 stations across China.
The company provided last October the 90 millionth battery swap in its domestic market and is now approaching 100 million.
As of press time, 97,585,800 swaps have been completed, leaving about 2.4 million more to reach the milestone.
In October, when it announced the 90-million milestone, Nio reported an average of more than 100,000 battery swaps per day.
According to data tracker nioswaps.com, an average of 100,025 battery swaps took place during the week of January 5–11.
In the previous two weeks, the averages were 112,046 and 100,436 swaps, respectively.
At the current pace, the company would reach its 100 millionth battery swap in about 24 days — meaning it will take a total of 102 days to complete the last 2 million swaps.
This trajectory is consistent with previous milestones — Nio reached 90 million swaps 99 days after surpassing 80 million, while the jump from 70 million to 80 million took 101 days.
In early October, the company also set a new record for daily battery swaps in China, completing more than 145,000 swaps in a single day.
The milestone coincided with China’s weeklong National Day holiday, a period of heavy travel in the country.
Missed Guidance in 2025
In 2021, Nio announced that it aimed to have over 4,000 battery swap stations worldwide by the end of 2025, including around 1,000 outside China.
However, these ambitious plans were later scaled back as deployment progressed more slowly than expected, namely overseas.
Nio had originally planned to install 2,000 new stations in 2025 across China — a goal that was later revised to between 1,800 and 2,000.
In early September, Nio founder and CEO William Li said the EV maker would fall short of its 2025 target as it reallocates resources toward the next-generation system
By the end of 2024, the company operated 2,995 battery swap stations in its domestic market.
Last year, 681 stations were added. The figures show that only 34.1% of the original guidance was met.
2026 Target
In the first 13 days of 2026, Nio has opened 14 battery swap stations in China.
In an internal letter to staff on New Year’s Day, Nio‘s founder and CEO William Li wrote that “the full-year plan includes more than 1,000 new swap stations, with total stations exceeding 4,600 by year-end.”
The company will also advance its “Battery Swap County Access” initiative and build more than 100 additional “Charging Wind & Snow Route” facilities.
The fifth generation battery swap stations are currently being tested in China with mass production planned to begin in the second quarter.
New Gen Stations
According to the CEO, 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.
Nio‘s fifth-generation battery swap stations will launch in the following months.
The new generation is expected to be more flexible, store more batteries (the 4th generation stores up to 23), and perform each swap in less time.
Nio is also making progress toward its goal of doubling battery availability for Onvo sub-brand customers across its battery swap network.
As reported by EV over the weekend, the company has already deployed over 6,150 new battery packs, reaching 76.88% of its target ahead of the Chinese New Year travel period.
The family-oriented brand remains on track to complete the initiative by mid-January, ultimately adding more than 8,000 battery packs to the network shared with Nio’s core brand.
CATL Weighs In
Nio operates the largest battery swap network in China.
However, competitors — including CATL, which partners with Nio in several energy-related areas — are working to catch up.
The battery giant hosted EV last September to demonstrate its “Choco Swap” stations, which can automatically replace a depleted battery in 70–80 seconds — about half of Nio‘s time.
CATL initially aimed to reach 1,000 Choco Swap stations by the end of 2025, followed by 2,500 in 2026, covering more than 100 cities.
The company announced in late November that it would reach the 1,000-station milestone one month ahead of schedule.
Late last year, after revealing that 1,020 stations were deployed in 2025, CATL raised its 2026 target from 2,500 to over 3,000 stations across more than 140 cities.
For perspective, the battery giant plans to deploy around 3,000 stations in two years, while Nio has installed about 3,600 stations over the past seven years.
CATL launched its ‘Choco-Swap’ ecosystem in December 2024.
Back then, the company unveiled two standardized battery models to be used in EV battery swapping.
Unlike Nio, which started by building its network around its own vehicles, CATL is working since day one with multiple carmakers to ensure broader compatibility.
The first models to use the Choco Swap stations last year included GAC’s Aion S sedan, Hongqi’s E-QM5, and SAIC’s Roewe D7, with several to follow later this year.
European Network
Nio opened in September 2022 a plant outside Budapest, Hungary, to assemble battery swap stations for the European market.
Earlier that year, the company opened its first European battery swap station in Lier, Norway.
By November 2023, Nio had doubled its European network to 30 stations and added another 20 within the following eight months, reaching 50 by July 2024.
However, expansion has slowed since then, with only 11 stations added so far.
Late last year, as reported by EV, Nio’s first and only battery swap station in Denmark was closed.
It marked the first time Nio has closed a facility anywhere in Europe since its debut on the continent.
Battery Swap Expansion Overseas
As the company expands beyond China with its Firefly and Onvo brands, and partners with local distributors to boost demand, it remains uncertain whether the battery swap system will be available in new markets in Europe.
The decision is left to each country’s distributor. So far, no European partner has confirmed whether they will adopt the system.
Late last year, Firefly chief Daniel Jin urged the Singapore distributor to implement Nio’s battery swap stations.
The brand chief mentioned that the company was negotiating to build three to five stations in Hong Kong.
