Chinese EV maker Nio reached 250,000 battery swaps in Europe, the company’s co-founder and President Lihong Qin said on Wednesday.
The Shanghai-based company, which has more than 3,700 battery swap stations in China, opened the first one in Europe exactly four years ago.
In its home market, the first one was launched in May 2018. The company is approaching the 100 millionth battery swap in China, with an average of 100,000 battery swaps per day.
Nio had provided the 200,000th swap in Europe on August 15.
The EV maker needed 159 days (over five months) to provide the latest 50,000 swaps.
On average, Nio drivers in Europe swapped their vehicle’s battery 9,564 times per month — approximately 315 per day.
Nio needed 98 days (slightly over three months) to reach the first 1,000 swaps across Europe in 2022. The company reached 10,000 less than a year later.
It then took them approximately 20 months (607 days) to achieve the first 100,000 swaps, a milestone accomplished on November 22, 2024.
European Stations
Nio opened its first European battery swap station in Lier, Norway, in January 2022.
Later that year, the company began assembling battery swap stations for the European market in a plant located outside Budapest, Hungary.
By November 2023, Nio had doubled its European network to 30 stations and added another 20 within the following eight months, reaching 50 by July 2024.
However, expansion has slowed due to investment cuts, as exclusively reported by EV last year.
Only 11 stations were added since then — most of them having been launched in late 2024.
Stations per Country
The company operates twenty-one battery swap stations in Germany and twenty in Norway, alongside thirteen in the Netherlands and eight in Sweden.
Additionally, one of the European stations is located in Antwerp, Belgium, near the Dutch border.
At the time of the launch, the company did not yet have a sales network in the country.
The EV maker entered the Belgian market late last year, as part of its latest expansion push in the Old Continent, which includes partnerships with local distributors and the introduction of both the Nio and Firefly brands.
As exclusively reported by EV late last year, Nio’s first and only battery swap station in Denmark has been closed.
It marked the first time Nio has closed a facility anywhere in Europe since its debut on the continent.
European Expansion
It remains unclear whether the battery swap system will be available in new European markets.
The decision will be made by each country’s distributor, and so far, no European partner has confirmed whether they will adopt the system.
Nio doubled its market presence in Europe last year, besides introducing its cheaper sub-brand Firefly there.
A total of 1,321 vehicles were sold across seven of its ten European markets in 2025, including the first vehicles registered in Belgium and Portugal over the past few months.
The Group aims to be present across 40 countries and regions by the year end.
