Nio began operating a battery swap station in China’s Gobi Desert that runs entirely on solar power and on-site energy storage, with no connection to the power grid.
The Chinese EV maker announced the opening of the Silk Road Xingxingxia station on its official Weibo account on Wednesday.
Nio claimed that the facility is the world’s first zero-carbon, off-grid battery swap station powered by solar generation and storage.
Located at the Xingxingxia service area on the G30 Lianyungang-Horgos Expressway, the station sits on the main road into Xinjiang.
Nio said the facility runs 24 hours a day with solar as its only energy source.
Co-founder and president Lihong Qin said at the opening ceremony that the project is Nio’s first deployment to validate off-grid battery swapping and will provide experience for expansion into similar regions.
Longi Supplier
Chinese solar manufacturer Longi Green Energy Technology supplied the station’s photovoltaic and storage hardware.
The site uses Longi’s Block mobile energy station and Longi’s H2D energy storage system.
Nio and Longi signed a strategic cooperation agreement on January 3, 2024, to promote photovoltaic power at charging and battery swap stations, according to a Nio statement reported by both Gasgoo and CnEVPost.
The agreement also covered vehicle-to-grid technology and industry standards for carbon-neutral mobility.
Their first jointly built HPBC (Hybrid Passivated Back Contact) photovoltaic swap station opened at the Xi’an Olympic Sports Center at the time.
Nio also said its fourth-generation stations would carry 60 square meters of solar panels each, saving nearly 18,000 kWh of electricity per station per year.
The Shanghai-headquartered EV maker describes the setup as a closed “generation-storage-use” loop.
Solar panels power the station directly during daylight hours and send surplus electricity into storage. Stored energy discharges overnight to keep swaps running.
During prolonged cloudy weather, the system switches automatically into an emergency mode and reserves power for critical loads.
Moving between the three operating modes requires no manual intervention, according to the company.
Liquid-cooled temperature control and a high-protection design keep the system stable in desert conditions, according to the company.
Desert Conditions
Xingxingxia lies in the eastern Gobi Desert, in a region with weak grid coverage. Winds reach force 8 or higher on more than 100 days a year.
Summer surface temperatures can exceed 70°C, while winter temperatures can fall to -30°C.
Extending the conventional grid to the site would require laying power lines across long stretches of desert, with lengthy construction periods and high costs, Nio said.
Remote western regions have lagged Nio’s swap buildout elsewhere in China.
Founder and CEO William Li said in July that full nationwide county-level swap coverage was about two years away, with exceptions for remote areas of Xinjiang and Tibet.
Silk Road Route
Xingxingxia serves as a key node on Nio’s Silk Road battery swap route, which is scheduled to be fully connected on September 26.
The corridor spans 3,605 kilometers and includes 33 swap stations.
Once the route opens, users will be able to depart from any Nio swap station in China and reach every provincial-level administrative region on the mainland using battery swaps alone, the company said.
Nio opened the first phase of the corridor, the Hexi Corridor route, on May 10.
The segment covers 1,739 kilometers from Xi’an to Dunhuang, with 20 swap stations spaced about 87 kilometers apart, according to Gasgoo.
A station at the Jinghe service area in Xinjiang’s Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture came online over the weekend.
In May, Nio had guided to a 3,448-kilometer route with more than 30 swap stations. The final corridor is 157 kilometers longer.
The new route supersedes an earlier version.
In July 2023, Nio announced a Silk Road route from Xi’an to Horgos covering 3,133 kilometers with 33 combined charging and swap stations. Every facility on the new route is a swap station.
Swap Network
As of Wednesday, Nio operated 4,109 battery swap stations in China, including 1,060 on highways.
The company crossed the 4,000-station mark in early August, when it also opened its first fifth-generation units across seven cities.
The company also ran 5,301 charging stations with over 30,500 charging piles and provided access to more than 1.7 million third-party charging piles.
Nio ended 2025 with 3,676 swap stations in China.
The current total implies 433 stations added so far in 2026, or 43.3% of the company’s target of more than 1,000 new stations this year.
Nio began large-scale deployment of its fifth-generation stations in late July after repeated delays, and had planned about 450 of them for the fourth quarter alone.
