Nio Inc.‘s battery swap network is on track to surpass 110 million cumulative swaps later on Monday, with the Shanghai-based EV maker operating 3,838 battery swap stations across China.
Including charging stations, the broader ‘Nio Power’ network spans 8,847 facilities nationwide with the company targeting 1,000 new battery swap stations alone this year.
The cumulative swap count was approximately 38,000 short of 110 million as of Monday afternoon local time.
Nio Inc.‘s founder and CEO William Li has recently publicly downgraded the strategic importance of the company’s third-party automaker alliance.
The 109,958,226 swap figure puts Nio approximately 2 million swaps beyond its 100 millionth swap, which the company completed on February 6 — implying that the network has been processing roughly 110,000 swaps per day on average over the past three months.
Shen Fei, a Nio veteran who previously oversaw the company’s energy arm was appointed as Onvo’s chief in early 2025.
Onvo’s Single-Day Record
Nio‘s family-focused Onvo sub-brand set a single-day battery swap record on Friday — the first day of China’s May Day “Golden Week” travel holiday — with 32,289 swaps completed on May 1.
Onvo accumulated 78,387 swaps across the three-day window from April 30 to May 2, the brand said in a social media post.
The brand also delivered 1,430,929 kilowatt-hours of free highway charging and battery swap energy over the same period under a service-fee waiver promotion that runs from April 30 through May 6.
The waived-fee promotion covers all Onvo vehicle owners except commercial vehicles using Onvo-available swap stations on national highways or Nio public charging stations via the brand’s App.
Network Infrastructure
Nio operates 5,009 charging stations equipped with 28,800 individual charging piles, in addition to the 3,838 battery swap stations.
The company has connected 1,589,877 third-party charging piles into its network, with third-party users accounting for 86.11% of total energy delivered through Nio‘s charging infrastructure.
The EV maker opened its first battery swap station in Shenzhen in 2018.
Gen-5 Stations
The fifth-generation battery swap stations — which Nio has positioned as the long-term technical platform for the network — will begin pioneer deployment between May and June, with mass deployment now scheduled for the third quarter, as EV reported on March 22.
The schedule represents the third revision to a timeline that has slipped repeatedly since Nio first targeted a trial run before Christmas 2025.
In September 2025, co-founder and President Lihong Qin told reporters in Hangzhou that pilot sites would enter trial operation “before Christmas” 2025, with capacity increasing by 20% over the fourth generation.
Qin described the system as “the ultimate goal of our battery swap strategy.”
The Christmas target was missed.
In December 2025, Li narrowed the timeline to pioneer deployment in the first quarter of 2026 and mass rollout from the second quarter.
In March, Li revised the schedule again, pushing mass deployment to July or August.
Nio plans to deploy five to 10 pioneer fifth-generation stations between May and June for trial operations.
Cross-Brand Compatibility
The fifth-generation stations will be the first in Nio‘s network to support all three of the company’s brands — the namesake Nio brand, the family-focused Onvo, and the compact Firefly.
Current fourth-generation stations support Nio and Onvo vehicles but not Firefly‘s 42.1 kWh battery pack.
Q4 Push to Hit Target
Nio plans to back-load its fifth-generation rollout to the fourth quarter, with roughly 450 of the planned stations expected to open in the last three months of the year — nearly half the full-year target in a single quarter.
Li reiterated in March that Nio‘s target of adding more than 1,000 battery swap stations in China this year remains unchanged.
The goal will require a sharp acceleration in the second half.
Nio ended 2025 with 3,676 stations in operation, after adding 681 stations during the year — well below its initial target of 1,800 to 2,000 new sites.
The company has added 162 stations since the start of 2026, with the network rising from 3,676 at the end of 2025 to 3,838 as of Sunday — a pace of approximately 40 stations per month.
Alliance Sidelined
Nio has signed battery-swap alliance agreements with eight automakers since November 2023, including Changan Automobile, Geely, Chery, JAC, Lotus, GAC, and FAW Group.
No alliance partner has launched a vehicle compatible with Nio‘s stations as of Sunday — more than two years after the first agreement was signed.
For the first time since Nio began assembling the alliance, Li publicly downgraded its strategic importance at a media roundtable on Wednesday, the day after Onvo unveiled the L80 SUV in Beijing.
