Nio, the Chinese electric vehicle maker known for its battery swap technology, is falling behind its 2025 target of building between 1,800 and 2,000 new battery swap stations across China.
The company closed the first half of the year with only 384 new sites completed — just 21.3% of the lower end of the guidance and 19.2% of the high end.
According to the company’s live map, Nio has 3,384 battery swap stations in China as of Monday.
The EV maker opened just six new battery swap stations in its home market last week, according to data compiled by X user CNEVHome, adding pressure to accelerate deployment in the second half of the year.
Nio launched its first battery swap station on May 20, 2018. The 1,000th station was completed on July 6, 2022, followed by the 2,000th on October 26, 2023 and by the 3,000th last January.
The pace is now significantly off track. With exactly 50% of the year elapsed, the company has reached about one-fifth of its stated target.
To meet even the lower bound of its revised goal Nio would need to add an average of 54 stations in each week of the second half of the year and 62 stations to reach the 2,000 target.
In the first half of the year, the company opened an average of 15 stations per week.
The slowdown comes despite a pledge by founder and CEO William Li last December that the company could build up to 200 battery swap stations in a single month.
At the time, Li said Nio was planning to construct 2,000 new swap stations in 2025 — doubling down on its battery-as-a-service infrastructure strategy, which allows drivers to replace depleted packs with fully charged ones in minutes.
Although in Europe the technology remains on a low scale, battery swapping is widely used in China by Nio users. The fourth-generation swap stations can perform swaps in about three minutes and store more batteries than earlier iterations.
Still, costs remain a barrier to faster expansion, as Nio continues to manage its spending — a challenge the company has tried to address through regional partnerships.
Yu Xiwei, head of energy industry partnerships at Nio, recently said the company had finalized agreements with partners in 15 provinces. These partnerships are aimed at lowering capital expenditure while accelerating station rollouts.
In early April, Nio’s main head behind the battery swap technology Fei Shen, was appointed to lead the sub-brand Onvo as the previous chief left following missed sales targets.
Until then, the VP of Nio Power was overseeing the company’s battery-swapping and charging infrastructure and reporting to the founder and CEO, William Li.
Since then, the role was assumed by Nio’s Chief Financial Officer Stanley Qu, who accumulates both functions.
Nio has also taken steps to improve operational efficiency, including filing a patent in late 2024 for an expandable, modular battery swap station system designed to increase capacity at existing sites without requiring new construction.
The company is also building larger “hub” stations in high-demand areas, a strategy revealed by Fei Shen, the former head of Nio Power and now head of Nio’s sub-brand Onvo.
Meanwhile, the EV maker’s overseas expansion has ground to a halt. Nio operates just 60 battery swap stations across five European countries — up only 10 from a year ago, despite having entered the continent with lofty ambitions in 2021.
Most of the stations, 40 out of the 60, are located in Norway and Germany.
As reported by EV earlier this year, Nio has dramatically downsized its European ‘Power’ division, with only five active employees remaining. Two of those are reportedly on long-term sick leave.
Amid mounting speculation that battery giant CATL could acquire a stake in Nio Power — as reported by Reuters earlier this year — CEO William Li has publicly denied such reports, urging users not to “believe or spread rumors.”
Still, the two companies continue to collaborate closely.
CATL launched two standardized swap-compatible batteries in December with plans to launch its batteru swap network in Europe in the future.
Nio’s chief said in early June at the first quarter earnings call that the company is using its stations as point of sales.
“Regarding using power swap as a point of sales, we are doing some demonstrations and the pilot runs in certain regions where we will not open the source, but use the power swap stations as a window to get to reach out our users and to demonstrate our products and services,” Li stated.
