Three years after its initial announcement and following multiple delays, Nio began mass producing its 150-kWh semi-solid-state battery in April 2024.
However, the EV maker known for its battery swap technology understood less than a year later that there was no demand for it.
The ultra-long-range battery pack, first unveiled at Nio‘s annual event in January 2021, has proven more valuable as a marketing tool than a product customers actually use, CEO William Li said, effectively ruling out its introduction to European markets.
“We mass produced the 150kWh battery pack last year in China. We have produced several hundreds of packs,” Li said, without specifying when production stopped.
Production and Specifications
According to Nio‘s user manual, the 150-kWh pack weighs 575 kg, a 20-kg increase over the 100-kWh version.
The battery is compatible with Nio‘s entire range of smart EVs and can be charged, swapped or upgraded through the company’s subscription-based battery swap network.
Li demonstrated the pack’s capabilities during a 14-hour livestream in December 2023, a few months before production began.
He drove a Nio ET7 on a 1,044-km (649-mile) journey from Zhejiang province to Fujian province, maintaining an average speed of 84 km/h throughout.
Unexpected Market Reality
Despite the technical achievement, customer adoption fell short of expectations.
“It’s true that the battery pack has a very long range as it has a very high energy density but it is also a little bit more pricier than the average battery packs,” Li admitted.
The EV maker, known for its heavy investment in battery swap technology, enabled customers to upgrade their vehicles from 75-kWh or 100-kWh packs to the 150-kWh version for a day or longer periods.
“We deployed the battery packs providing our users the option to flexibly upgrade to the 150kWh we found that actually they are not using this pack as often as we expected,” Li said.
Swap Network Effect
Li attributed the lack of demand to Nio‘s extensive battery swap infrastructure in China, which allows customers to replace depleted batteries with fully charged ones in minutes.
“Many of them are actually not using or upgrading to such battery pack. It’s because we have more accessible power swap network in China,” he said.
The CEO described a counterintuitive trend: as Nio expanded its swap network, customers gravitated toward smaller, cheaper battery packs.
“Years ago, when we didn’t have that many power swap stations we had a 50/50 take rate between a 75kWh battery and a 100kWh battery,” Li said. “But now, as we have more than 3,500 swap stations in China, actually 97% of users choose the 75kWh over 100kWh.”
“As they find that with these many swap stations, you don’t need a very big battery pack or a very long range for the car,” he added.
Marketing Over Utility
Li acknowledged the 150-kWh battery served primarily as a marketing tool rather than addressing genuine customer needs.
“The number of people that wants to drive 1,000km nonstop is very limited,” he said, noting the ultra-long-range battery “is more serving a marketing purpose than the real need.”
“Then, when it comes to the 150kWh battery, the need is even more rare as not many people want to really drive 1,000km nonstop,” the CEO added.
Europe Ruled Out
Li dismissed bringing the battery to European markets, where Nio operates 61 swap stations across Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark.
The first European station opened in Norway in January 2022, with rollout slowing sharply since last year due to cost controls.
“Not to mention that to introduce the 150kWh battery to the European market we would need to do additional tests and validations and also the certification of the product,” he said. “That can also drive additional costs and efforts.”
“With that, we’d rather use the money or the budget to deploy more swap stations as that can truly solve the problem for our users on the range than having a very large battery pack,” Li said.
“Not to mention that the 150kWh battery pack is pretty expensive in the subscription fee so we believe that it doesn’t make sense either from the business perspective nor from the use case or user experience perspective,” he concluded.
