NIO Performs 1.2 Million Battery Swaps in Just 7 Days

NIO is well known for having led the world into a completely new, much bigger era of EV battery swapping. Yes, of course, most of the industry isn’t using battery swapping, but NIO has brought the concept a totally new level, and CATL and some others have jumped in more recently in a serious way.

The latest news is that NIO broke its own single-day battery swapping record — twice — across a very big week. During the 7-day National Day holiday in China, NIO implemented 1.2 million battery swaps. “The Chinese EV maker’s 4,168 battery swap stations completed 1,192,221 swaps from October 1 to 7, with the daily average rising 22% from a year earlier, according to a holiday charging and battery swap report released on Friday,” CnEVPost writes. “Including charging, Nio’s 9,567 charging and battery swap stations across China provided 2,071,582 services during the holiday, with the daily average up 20.5% year-on-year. The figures cover its 3 brands: Nio, Onvo and Firefly.”

Those are some pretty stunning, wild numbers. For anyone who thinks battery swapping is a tiny, niche, insignificant segment of the market, just look at those numbers.

On October 1, NIO performed a record 183,469 battery swaps, braking the previous record of 177,627 battery swaps. That record only stood for a few days, though. On October 5, the company performed 183,664 battery swaps. Said another way, a NIO vehicle got a battery swap every 47 seconds!

Looking back to earlier this year, “During this year’s Labor Day holiday, Nio’s 3,839 battery swap stations completed 1,031,469 swaps over 7 days.” 1,192,221 is quite a jump from there.

A few more stats that pop out:

• The NIO, ONVO, and FIREFLY EV drivers saved 309,124 hours that they would have spent on EV charging if not for the swap stations.
• That’s a 14.7% increase over the estimated savings a year earlier.
• The busiest swap station conducted 211 battery swaps in one day.
• 250 different swap stations set daily swap records during the record week.
• 203,581 different drivers used NIO battery swap stations over the week.
• NIO also surpassed 100 million cumulative charging sessions on October 3.