Nio will offer faster battery swaps in Europe starting this autumn

SHANGHAI -- Chinese premium electric brand Nio will install faster battery swap stations in Europe beginning this autumn amid a slower-than-expected rollout of its network.

The new stations will knock a minute off the swapping time and add more packs per station, the company said.

Nio currently has 13 so-called Power Swap Stations in Europe located in Norway, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, which Nio CEO William Li said was "far behind our original planning" on the company's earnings call in March.

Nio originally planned 20 swap stations in Europe by the end of 2022.

The target for the end of 2023 is 70 in the region, but Nio President Lihong Qin told Automotive News Europe in March he would like that number to reach 100 this year.

Nio underestimated barriers to construction such as planning permissions and labor shortages, Qin, who co-founded the company with Li in 2015, said at a press conference ahead of the Shanghai auto show.

Nio plans to have 1,000 swap stations outside China by the end of 2025, the majority in Europe.

All Nio cars are compatible to use the swap stations, which offer a much faster alternative to battery charging.

The third-generation stations reduce the swap time to 4 minutes and 40 second from 5 minutes ad 40 seconds and can store 21 battery packs instead of 13 currently, Fei Shen, head of Nio Power, told journalists at presentation held in Shanghai.

"The experience is much better both for the user and for efficiency," Shen said.

Nio's third-generation swap stations can also be operated unmanned, which currently isn't the case with the second-generation stations in Europe.

Nio aims to have 1,000 unmanned swap stations in China by the end of the second quarter, Shen said, reducing its operational costs.

Nio currently has 1,365 swap stations globally, the majority in China. It says owners have completed 20 million battery swaps since the first was installed in November 2018.

The total cost of the new swap stations will increase due to the greater number of batteries in each station, Shen said. However, the installation costs will reduce because of the design, which uses shallower foundations.

Nio's second-generation swap stations cost about 400,000 euros including battery packs, Li said in an interview last year. No figure was given for the third-generation stations.

The number of swaps per day for the third-generation swap stations will increase to more than 200, Shen said, up from 171 today.

Nio's battery swap stations read breakeven after 60 swaps per day with the electricity price at the same kilowatt price as the company's charge stations, Shen added.

Customers who want to use the swapping service must lease the battery separately. Nio said that almost 95 percent of customers in its launch market of Norway took the option. The lease includes two free swaps a month.

Li said on the March earnings call that the sluggish rollout of its swap stations "affected the delivery and the sales in the European market."

Nio sold 78 cars in Europe in the first two months of the year, down from 146 in the same period in 2022, according to figures from market researchers Dataforce.

Li said Nio's sales target for Europe in 2023 was conservative at less than 10,000. "The only thing that we need to speed up is the infrastructure building in the European market," Li added.