Nio set a new record for daily battery swaps in China, completing more than 145,000 swaps in a single day as drivers took to the roads during the country’s weeklong National Day holiday.
According to data from third-party tracker ‘NioSwapInfo’, the company logged 145,395 swaps on October 1, surpassing previous highs recorded during major travel periods.
The top three cities were Shanghai (9,670 swaps), Beijing (4,892), and Hangzhou (3,983).
Over the past 30 days, Nio averaged about 95,450 swaps per day, as its customer base grows at a record pace.
As of early Sunday, Nio’s cumulative swap count reached 87.93 million, according to real-time data from Nio Power’s live dashboard on its official website.
The automaker currently has 3,520 battery-swap stations nationwide and 61 in Europe.
Year to date, — Nio has opened 525 new stations since the start of the year in China, 27,258 Nio-branded chargers and more than 1.37 million third-party chargers.
The network handled an average of 7,545 swaps per hour on Sunday, with the previous million-swap milestone reached just seven days earlier, suggesting accelerating utilization rates as Nio’s vehicle fleet expands.
China’s National Day holiday, known as “Golden Week,” is one of the country’s busiest travel periods, traditionally driving higher vehicle usage and energy demand.
In early September, Nio founder and CEO William Li said the EV maker will fall short of its 2025 target for new battery-swap stations in China as it reallocates resources toward a next-generation system.
The company had originally aimed to install 2,000 new stations this year, later revising the goal to between 1,800 and 2,000. As of September 10 — the day Li commented — Nio had added 488 sites, equivalent to about 27.1 percent of the target.
Li said deployment of current fourth-generation stations has slowed because they cannot be upgraded to support new battery sizes across Nio and its two sub-brands, Onvo and Firefly.
“Mainly because we have to think about deploying the fifth-generation stations,” Li said.
Nio’s current 4th-generation swap stations can complete a battery change in under three minutes, use LiDAR for positioning, store up to 23 battery packs, and perform as many as 480 swaps per day.
“Our fourth-generation stations cannot be modified to support different ones. The size of those battery packs is too different. So our fifth-generation station is a completely new design,” Li added.
He said the fifth-generation version will launch in the first quarter of next year, offering greater flexibility, higher capacity, and faster swap times.
Earlier this year, Nio filed patents for modular stations that can expand capacity in high-density areas and has considered building larger swap hubs in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.
Currently, Nio vehicles use 75-, 100-, 120- and 150-kWh packs, while Onvo models use 65- and 85-kWh batteries and Firefly’s model a 42.1-kWh pack — bringing the total to seven different capacities, up from two three years ago.
Nio Group posted record vehicle deliveries in September, handing over 34,749 units across its three brands Nio, Onvo and Firefly.
However, as of September 30, year to date deliveries stood at 201,221 vehicles with half of the annual target yet to be reached.
The company said last months it is targeting 150,000 EVs delivered in the final quarter of the year indicating it expects to hand over 351,000 vehicles missing the target by 90,000 units.
