Fei Shen, Nio’s former ‘Nio Power’ unit chief and the newly appointed head of the sub-brand Onvo, said on Thursday that the company is focusing on making its battery swap stations more flexible and customizable, with plans to develop larger “hubs” to meet higher demand in major cities.
“The key focus of our current iteration before the launch of the station is on its flexibility,” Fei Shen said in a media session at the Shanghai Auto Show as the company faces increasing complexity in its battery swap stations.
In total, Nio’s upcoming 5th generation stations must have batteries of 42.1 kWh for Firefly’s compact EV, 60 kWh and 85 kWh for Onvo vehicles and 75,100 and 150 kWh batteries for the main Nio brand vehicles.
“That is to say, for one station—for example, I know this station is going to ship to a certain place in Shenzhen—then before it’s shipped out from the factory, it can be flexibly customized. For instance, saying: ‘I’ll allocate a few battery slots here for old Nio vehicles, then for the MT3’s Onvo, and also reserve a few for Firefly,” Fei Shen stated.
As reported by EV on January 2, Nio has filed a patent for a new expandable battery swap station system in the final days of 2024. This new type of station is a modular extension unit that can be attached to existing battery swap stations, increasing the number of batteries available.
Currently, fourth-generation stations can store up to 23 batteries.
Shen, formerly head of Nio Power, was appointed to lead Onvo on April 1, replacing Alan Ai, a former WeWork and Disney executive who stepped down after weaker than expected sales results in the first months of the year.
Onvo’s chief said swap stations must also be adaptable over time based on demand. “Maybe after three years of operation on-site, I discover that the original battery bay configuration is not quite reasonable and I want to make some changes. Can I make some adjustments to it with the least effort?” Shen said.
Citing smaller battery packs for Nio’s Firefly brand, Shen noted operational efficiency could suffer if too many are stored at general-use stations. “By then, the Firefly boom may have subsided, and perhaps we should dismantle those three battery bays and build a dedicated small Firefly station next to it,” he said.
This year, Nio’s founder and CEO William Li has recently stated that the company aims to build between 1,800 and 2,000 new stations in China — a slight reduction from the previous target of deploying 2,000 stations.
Shen emphasized that merely adding more battery bays is not the current priority. “Simply increasing battery slots is probably not the key focus at present,” he said. “The battery bays themselves are probably not the main focus for us to consider.”
Looking ahead, Shen described a vision for a new type of high-capacity station in major urban centers such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. “Maybe around 2026, there should be breakthroughs with new station formats beyond the current battery swap stations, like larger stations,” he said.
“In some areas, as long as you set up a station, they typically have around 60 to 80 stations. That means the vehicle population in that area is sufficient. Perhaps we really should refer to how gas stations are done now—when I secure a piece of land on-site, I use that land to construct and build around it,” Shen said.
He said these new “hubs” would feature centralized battery storage and multiple swap lanes, increasing daily capacity. “That way, the single capacity of this large station might reach 3 million or 4 million (RMB) [$412,000 — $549,000] per day, for example. That’s something we should try,” Shen said.
“I’ve always felt this thing shouldn’t be called a battery swap station, because the trendy term now is ‘Battery Swap Hub,’” he added.
Nio currently operates more than 3,270 battery swap stations in China and provided over 72 million battery swaps since 2018.
Nio Group‘s co-founder and President Lihong Qin said on Wednesday the Onvo brand “did not reach the goals we had previously set for ourselves, and we also did not meet the expectations that the outside world had for us.”
The brand unveiled at the Shanghai Auto Show its second model, the L90. Deliveries of the three-row SUV are expected to start in the third quarter in China.
According to the latest weekly registration data published earlier this week, Onvo sold 700, 735, and 770 units in the three weeks between March 31 and April 20, bringing total registrations for April to approximately 2,205 units (as of the 20th day of the month).
