Chinese EV maker Nio opened a battery swap station in Germany on Monday, its first new one in Europe in more than 13 months, taking its European network back to 61 after the closure of its only Danish site last year.
The third-generation station, in Staufenberg-Lutterberg northeast of Kassel, sits on the A7 highway between Hanover and Frankfurt. It is Nio’s 22nd in Germany and its 61st in Europe, the company said in a LinkedIn post.
“This location fills an important gap in Europe’s north-south transport corridors,” Nio said. “The station is therefore ideal for everyone traveling between Germany and Scandinavia, for example on the way to Sweden.”
The station is open daily from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Its nearest Nio stations are Reiskirchen, about 130 km (81 miles) to the south, and Hanover-Großburgwedel, about 160 km (99 miles) to the north, the company said.
Third-generation stations hold up to 21 batteries and can perform up to 408 swaps a day and cannot serve the sub-brand Firefly, which uses a smaller 42.1kWh battery pack.
First opening since Sep. 2025
Nio’s previous European opening was in Hamburg on September 4, 2025. The new station also comes five months after a senior executive told owners at a meeting in May that Nio would not build new swap stations or charging infrastructure in Europe, according to an attendee.
Nio’s Norwegian unit pushed back against that coverage in a statement on June 10. “Europe is and remains a central part of NIO’s global strategy, and Norway is one of the markets where we have the strongest foundation,” said An Ho, Managing Director of NIO Norway.
The company said its European push “is not being slowed, but developed further,” and that recent media coverage gave “an unnuanced picture of the situation.”
It listed a new battery swap station in the Oslo West and Bærum area among its Norwegian plans, along with a delivery of 105 cars in July.
“Battery swap technology remains a core part of NIO’s global ecosystem, and Norway is among the markets in Europe with the highest use,” Nio said. It did not give a date for the Bærum station, which has not been announced as open.
Nio’s Dutch website still listed 60 swap stations on Monday morning.
2022: Ten stations in a year
Nio opened its first European station in Lier, Norway, southwest of Oslo, on January 19, 2022. It was the company’s first anywhere outside China, four months after Nio began selling cars in Norway.
The second followed seven months later, in Vestby, south of Oslo, on August 15.
Germany’s first opened in Zusmarshausen on the A8 highway on September 28, days before Nio formally launched in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark in October. A second German station, at the Hilden interchange of the A3 and A46, went live on October 27, Nio said.
By then the stations were coming from Nio’s own European plant. Nio signed for the site in Biatorbágy, near Budapest, in July 2022. Hungary’s investment promotion agency said on September 16 that the plant’s first completed station marked its official inauguration.
Sweden’s first station opened in Varberg, on the E6 between Gothenburg and Malmö, on November 17. The Netherlands followed on December 1, with a station at a hotel in Tilburg off the A58, and a second in Apeldoorn on the A50 on December 13.
Mantorp, on Sweden’s E4, opened on December 21 as the ninth in Europe, and Den Hoorn, on the Dutch A4, took the total to 10 on December 29. Norway’s third station, in Lillehammer on the E6, was due in November 2022, but its opening date could not be confirmed.
All European stations at the time were second-generation units, holding 13 batteries.
2023: Gen-3 arrives
Utrecht, on the A2, became the 11th station in Europe, running on trial from January before an official opening in February.
Denmark’s only station, in Slagelse on the E20 about 100 km (62 miles) southwest of Copenhagen, became the 12th. It went live in March 2023.
Norway’s first station outside the Oslo area opened in Stavanger on March 8. Nio counted 14 stations in Europe in a list it published on May 5, including Kungälv in Sweden.
Harmelen, at a Shell service station in the Netherlands, opened on May 15 as the 16th. Dordrecht followed on June 22, and Germany’s third station, in Dorsten, opened on June 29.
The 20th station opened on July 27, in Germany. Nio’s German stations at Großburgwedel on the A7 and Waldlaubersheim on the A61 opened that week. Ulm-Seligweiler and Regensburg in Germany, Kløfta in Norway and Enköping in Sweden opened by mid-August.
The first third-generation station in Europe, holding 21 batteries, opened in Stockholm’s Frihamnen district in August as the 25th. Arnhem opened later in the month, and Maastricht-Aachen Airport became the 27th on October 11, Nio’s second third-generation unit in Europe.
Malmö and Arlandastad, near Stockholm, both third-generation, opened together on November 30, taking the network to 30 in five European markets, Nio said. It then had 2,217 stations worldwide.
Amsterdam Zuidoost, at the A2 and A9 junction, became the 33rd on December 18. Three Norwegian stations opened on December 15, 16 and 27, bringing the year-end total to 34.
2024: The peak year
Germany led the first half of 2024. Lehre opened on January 30, Reiskirchen on the A5 on February 21 and Schipkau on the A13 the next day, its 11th in the country. Three more German stations opened on March 26 to 28 and another on April 23.
The 16th German station, at Motorworld Manufaktur in Berlin-Spandau, opened on July 1 as the 44th in Europe.
Norway then took over. Nio opened five stations in two weeks, ending with Straume and Oslo-Bryn, both on July 15. The Oslo station, a third-generation unit, was the 50th in Europe.
Nio added Norwegian stations on July 18, August 13 and August 15, a German station on August 29, and a Dutch and a Norwegian station on September 5. A German station, in Viernheim according to German press reports, followed at the end of October.
The 20th Norwegian station, in Trondheim, opened on November 7 as the 58th in Europe.
On December 12, Nio opened its first station in Belgium, in Edegem on the E19 near Antwerp. It was the 59th in Europe and the first in a country where Nio did not sell cars. “A battery swap here is now enough to drive straight to Paris without any stops,” Nio said.
That made 2024 Nio’s busiest year in Europe, with 25 openings. It was also the last year of real growth.
2025: The first closure
In April 2025, Nio’s European swap expansion had stalled amid investment cuts, a person familiar with the matter said. Nio had opened nine stations in the nine months after reaching 50.
The 60th station, in Sankt Augustin near Bonn, opened at the end of April as the 20th in Germany, matching Norway. It was a second-generation unit with 13 batteries, older than the third- and fourth-generation stations Nio was building in China.
The 61st and last, in Hamburg, opened on September 4, 2025, Nio’s 21st in Germany.
Two months later, Nio closed the Slagelse station in Denmark, its first closure of a swap station in Europe. The site had been marked “Under Maintenance” for months before it disappeared from Nio’s map. Nio was relaunching in Denmark through a distributor, without its battery rental service.
On November 11, Nio said for the first time that it had “60 in Europe,” in a statement on approval from Sweden’s grid operator, Svenska kraftnät, for its eight Swedish stations to help stabilize the grid.
2026
Nio opened no stations in Europe in the first ten months of 2026. At the May meeting, the executive also ruled out fourth- and fifth-generation units for Europe, according to the attendee.
Monday’s opening is a third-generation unit as the company rolls out fifth-generation stations in its home market.
Founder and CEO William Li said in November 2025 that Nio needed a European partner to hold battery assets. “In Europe, we don’t have such a partner or such a company, which means that all the battery assets provided via BaaS will be held by us in our balance sheet,” he said.
In September 2026, after Geely agreed to take 30% of NIO Power, Li said Geely had asked whether the two should announce a European swap network plan together next year. Neither company’s deal documents mentioned Europe.
The current network
The 61 stations are in Germany (22), Norway (20), Sweden (8), Belgium (1) and the Netherlands, which by arithmetic has 10. Germany now has the most of any European country, two more than Norway.
Nio’s swap count has kept rising, but more slowly. The first 1,000 European swaps took 98 days in 2022. When Nio reached 10,000 in early 2023, it had 11 stations.
It reached 100,000 swaps on November 22, 2024, and 200,000 in mid-August 2025. Co-founder and President Lihong Qin announced 250,000 in January 2026, and the 300,000th came on June 21, 2026.
Nio had said it planned 120 new stations in Europe in 2023 alone and 1,000 outside China by 2025. It opened 24 in 2023, and Monday’s opening brings its total European openings to 62, one of which has closed.
