Written by Cláudio Afonso | LinkedIn | X
As the Lunar New Year approaches and millions of Chinese travel to their hometowns for family reunions, EV maker Onvo promises to accelerate the deployment of 60kWh batteries at Nio’s battery swap stations to ensure that its more than 25,000 customers can easily swap their vehicle batteries and avoid charging queues on highways.
Onvo, the second brand launched by the Nio Group last year, currently operates over 1,200 battery swap stations across China, including 400 located near highways. On Friday, Nio provided more than 103,000 battery swaps in China, crossing the 100,000th mark for the first time ever.
Batteries Available at Swap Stations
In a new Q&A post shared on a Chinese app this Saturday, Xia Qinghua, the company’s head of user and service operations, assured customers that the team is “working hard” to add more than 100 additional 60kWh batteries to its stations by Lunar New Year’s Eve, which falls on January 29.
“Of the 1,000 planned batteries, over 900 have been added, with 85% of highway stations now having at least two 60 kWh batteries available,” Qinghua wrote.
“The [Nio/ Onvo] Power team is working hard to add the remaining 100+ batteries by New Year’s Eve [January 29], ensuring everyone’s travel needs during the festival,” the executive added. “By then, there will be over 1,200 swap stations and more than 2,100 60 kWh batteries available.”
The company said last week it would offer unlimited battery swaps at its more than 400 highway-adjacent stations from January 22 to February 12.
Battery Supply Constraint
In early December, Citi analyst Jeff Chung revealed that Onvo’s deliveries in October and November were affected by a supply constraint from BYD’s FinDreams battery division.
After meeting with the company’s management, Chung said BYD could only supply between 5,000 and 6,000 battery units per month in both months.
When asked by EV for confirmation and an update on the battery supply issue, Nio’s founder and CEO, William Li, confirmed it and revealed that the company has now added a new supplier to ensure that the ambitious production targets are met. Until then, FinDreams was Onvo’s sole supplier for the 60kWh batteries.
Sales Figures and Upcoming Models
As reported on Wednesday, Onvo has reportedly completed trial production of its second vehicle model, an image shared on the social media platform Weibo showed.
Onvo’s registrations increased by 100 units last week but remained below the levels recorded at the beginning of 2025 when total registrations reached 2,300 units.
Nio’s sub-brand Onvo registered 1,900 units in China in the third week of the year, data shared by Li Auto showed on Tuesday.
In December, Onvo delivered 10,528 units fulfilling its promise of delivering over 10,000 units for the first time. The management aims now to double its monthly figures to 20,000 units in March.
Nio has been expanding its infrastructure, constructing fourth-generation battery swap stations across China with a goal to increase the total number of stations from 3,000 to 5,000 by the end of the year.
The automaker began upgrading its third-generation stations last year to also accommodate Onvo vehicles, enhancing compatibility across its network.
