Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter
The electric vehicle maker NIO announced on Monday the opening of three new Power Swap Stations (PSS) in China being now only 5 stations away from the 1,000th. The company recently reiterated its ambition of having over 1,300 PSS by the end of 2022 which indicates a pace of 50 new stations per month during the next six until the end of the year.
Two of those new facilities are located on the Shaoxin Expressway and the other one is in Maoming, Guangdong province. “The completion of the new station provides users in and around Guangzhou”, NIO said.
In mid-April, the company opened its 900th Power Swap Station in China announcing that users had changed batteries more than 8,000,000 times saving users over 8 million hours when compared to the common 60kW DC piles on the market.
As of June 27, NIO has 995 Power swap stations across China, 873 Supercharge Stations offering 4,781 charging piles, and over 510,000 third-party charging piles.
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On January 19, the company launched its first European Power Swap Station, located in Norway – the entrance country for the Chinese EV maker. Last September, with the opening of the NIO House Oslo, NIO started selling its products in Europe and plans to enter another four markets this year: Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden.
In mid-June, during a conference with NIO users, the CEO enhanced the effects of the pandemic during the last months on the production of new battery swap stations, “The layout of the power station has been greatly affected by the epidemic in Shanghai this year. The production plant of the power station was directly unable to produce due to the epidemic. It’s true that it [the pace of new BSS in China] didn’t meet expectations, but it’s not that it doesn’t make sense at the moment,” William Li said.
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In addition, William Li reiterated the company’s goal of achieving 1,300 Battery Swap Stations worldwide by the end of the year and confirmed the plan to have a plant to build these facilities in Europe.
As initially reported by EV on April 15, the EV maker started looking for an EU Plant Manager in Hungary last April. The company aims to produce Power Swap Stations (PSS) and Charging Piles in Europe to avoid exporting costs from China. The position is located in Budapest (Hungary) suggesting that the company could build/ buy a factory there in the upcoming months and establish its European PSS production center in the country.
On Friday, NIO said on Twitter that it would enter the Dutch market with its sedan model NIO ET7 in the last quarter of the year. When asked which vehicles will be available in the last quarter of the year in the Netherlands, NIO answered, “We will start with the ET7 in the Netherlands”.
Less than 24 hours later, the official NIO Deutschland account deleted the tweet saying they “mixed the information” and that the sedan NIO ET7 will be available in Germany in Q4 2022. When it comes to all the other markets (The Netherlands included), enthusiasts may “stay tuned for more information”.
In September 2021, when NIO entered Norway, the model chosen to be available in the Nordic country was the NIO ES8. At the time, when the Shanghai-based company expanded overseas, the ET7 model was already known but not in the production phase.
The EV manufacturer will enter 4 new European Markets in 2022: Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and The Netherlands. During the last NIO Day, the company revealed that will be present in 25 Countries by 2025.
Last week, NIO’s Europe Vice-President Hui Zhang was present at the Join Sweden Summit in Stockholm ahead of the expansion to the Nordic country. In an interview with Dagens Industri, Zhang was asked about NIO’s competition in Sweden with Tesla and the Swedish Polestar where he replied to enhancing the company’s business models such as the Power Swap Stations and the BaaS (Battery as a Service).
On the first day of June, the company reported 7,024 vehicles delivered in May showing an increase year-over-year and also from the previous month, when delivered 5,074 units. On NIO App, William Li answered customers and enthusiasts saying “Thank you all! We will continue to work hard in June”.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter
