Nio Group delayed the mass deployment of its fifth-generation battery swap stations to July or August, the third revision to a timeline that has slipped repeatedly since the company first targeted a trial run before Christmas 2025.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer William Li disclosed the updated schedule on Saturday at a ‘User Face-to-Face’ customer event in Wuhan, where the new stations are being manufactured.
Internal test units will be activated by the end of March, Li said.
Between five and 10 pioneer stations will open to users for trial operations in May and June. Full-scale deployment will begin in the second half of the year.
The disclosure marks a shift from Li’s statements in December 2025, when he told media that “starting from Q2 next year, all the battery-swap stations we deploy will be fifth-generation stations.”
The EV maker now plans to begin volume deployment in the third quarter of the year.
The stations will be the first capable of serving all Nio‘s three brands — Nio, Onvo, and Firefly — from a single piece of infrastructure.
The current fourth-generation system, deployed since June 2024, supports only the Nio and Onvo brands.
A Pattern of Slippage
Saturday’s announcement extends a delay pattern that began last year.
In September 2025, co-founder and President Lihong Qin told reporters (including EV) 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.
By October, Nio disclosed that a pilot would be located near headquarters and that almost all new stations from March 2026 onward would be fifth-generation units.
In December, Li narrowed the timeline to pioneer deployment in Q1 and mass rollout from Q2.
Saturday’s revised schedule effectively delays each milestone by two to three months.
Internal testing — originally expected before Christmas — will start in late March, roughly three months behind.
Mass deployment moves from Q2 to July or August, a delay of at least one to two months.
Li attributed the slippage to a fundamental redesign of the station’s architecture to support a far wider range of vehicle wheelbases.
The fifth-generation system must handle everything from the compact Firefly to the upcoming ES9, Nio‘s largest SUV.
The company said it is prioritizing a high success rate for automated parking through extensive validation before opening the stations to the public.
At Nio Day 2025 in September, Li outlined the rationale for each generational leap in the company’s swap station history.
“First to second generation enabled unmanned operation; third generation improved efficiency; third to fourth generation added compatibility with Onvo batteries; fourth to fifth generation will be more flexible, compatible with more batteries, and prepared to support external brands.”
The 1,000-Station Math
Li reiterated on Saturday 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.
As of Saturday, progress stands at roughly 8.5% of the annual target — approximately 85 stations installed so far in 2026.
Nio currently operates 3,761 battery swap stations in China, of which 1,025 are on highways.
Its network also includes 4,943 charging stations and access to more than 1.57 million third-party charging piles.
The company completed its 100 millionth battery swap on February 6.
In a New Year’s Day letter to staff, Li wrote that the total network should exceed 4,600 stations by year-end and that Nio would expand its “Power Up Routes” to 100, including completing the Silk Road route this year after finishing the Sichuan-Tibet and Yunnan-Tibet corridors in 2025.
Infrastructure Slowdown and Shift to Asset-Light Model
The company slowed station construction over the past two years to control capital expenditure, falling well short of its own targets.
Li originally set a goal of 2,000 new stations for 2025, later revised to 1,800–2,000.
Li acknowledged in September that deployment of fourth-generation stations had slowed specifically because they could not be upgraded to support the new battery sizes.
To reach its 2026 targets, Nio is increasingly relying on partnerships to share construction costs and revenue — an asset-light model it is also applying in overseas markets.
The company has also shifted its site selection strategy toward highway exits, a positioning it said can serve both highway transit and county-level markets simultaneously.
Competitive Pressure
The delays come as Nio faces intensifying competition in China’s battery swap and fast-charging infrastructure race.
CATL, the world’s largest EV battery maker and Nio’s primary cell supplier, launched its competing “Choco Swap” standard in December 2024.
The system — designed for cross-brand compatibility from day one — had 1,020 stations deployed across 45 cities by the end of 2025, and CATL has since raised its 2026 target to more than 3,000 stations.
Multiple automakers including GAC’s Aion and BAIC’s Arcfox have already announced Choco-compatible models.
Nio, by contrast, has signed battery swap alliance agreements with eight automakers since November 2023 but none have yet launched a compatible vehicle.
BYD, meanwhile, unveiled earlier this month a 1,500-kilowatt charging system capable of refilling a battery from 10% to 97% in nine minutes, and is targeting 20,000 FLASH Charging stations by year-end 2026 — more than five times Nio’s entire swap network built over eight years.
Fourth-Generation Specs
Nio’s current fourth-generation battery swap stations were unveiled at Nio Day 2023 on December 23, 2023, and began deployment in June 2024.
The stations hold up to 23 battery packs — up from 21 in the third generation — and can handle up to 480 swaps per day.
Each swap takes under three minutes, using LiDAR-based vehicle positioning.
The fifth-generation stations are expected to increase capacity by roughly 20% over the fourth generation and feature modular, customizable battery slot configurations.
Onvo President Fei Shen — who built the swap network from zero as head of Nio Power before moving to lead the sub-brand in April 2025 — said at the Shanghai Auto Show that stations should be reconfigurable after deployment.
“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. That’s something we should try.”
