Chinese electric vehicle (EV) startup Nio plans to build 1,000 battery-swapping stations in China in 2023 to bring the total number of such facilities to 2,300 by year-end.
Nio will build 400 battery-swapping stations along highways and 600 in urban areas with a focus on the country’s third- and fourth-tier cities and counties, Nio Founder and Chairman William Li said.
Battery swapping allows drivers to replace depleted packs quickly with fully charged ones, rather than plugging the vehicle into a charging point. Swapping could help mitigate the growing strains placed on power grids as millions of drivers juice up.
Nio is among the few EV makers that are betting on battery swapping as one of the major power solutions for electric cars. Rival Tesla had previously dismissed battery swapping as “riddled with problems and not suitable for widescale use”.