Nio plans to have around 3000 battery swap stations in China by 2025, by which time it estimates that 90% of its customers will live within 1.9 miles of one.
Will swapping replace charging? We visit a Nio battery swap station as Chinese firms seek to improve the EV experience
F
rank Skarpass, manager of a Norwegian power grid company, is digesting the information that the structure resembling a hightech car wash right next to the bank of chargers where he’s topping up his Jaguar I-Pace is for swapping EV batteries. “It only takes five minutes? That’s the dream,” he says. “Charging is without doubt a hassle.” This battery swap station in
Lier, southern Norway, is the first to be installed in Europe by Nio, a Chinese EV company that has been compared to Tesla. The premise is simple, even if the mechanics aren’t: the swap station will replace a depleted EV battery for a full one in around five minutes. Nio already has 836 swap stations in China and plans to increase that to 1300 globally by the end of this year. Twenty of those will be in Norway, and
W HO OW NS THE BAT TERY? To use Nio’s swap stations in Norway, drivers have to lease the battery. This costs from the equivalent of £175 per month for the 100kWh battery (90kWh usable from stations), cutting the car’s price by the equivalent of £7500 and giving drivers two free swaps per month.
24 AUTOCAR.CO.UK 13 APRIL 2022
The cheaper option is the forthcoming 75kWh battery, which can be swapped in like for like. There’s also a 150kWh battery in the pipeline that will fit newer Nios, such as the ET7 limo, a Mercedes-Benz EQS rival. That would be useful if you were planning a holiday.
Nio is lining up sites in Germany for its big launch there later this year. When it brings its range of premium-priced SUVs and saloons to the UK (we’ve been given plenty of hints but no date yet), it will install them here too. “It gives us a unique selling point,” Nio European managing director Hui Zhang told Autocar. The idea of battery swapping isn’t new. Tesla proposed it before settling on building the Supercharger network. And back in 2008, Israeli firm Better Place inked a deal with Renault to use its swapping system in EVs, starting with the Fluence ZE. Stations were built in Israel and Denmark, but the idea didn’t take off, and Better Place went bankrupt in 2013. But while battery swapping has been dormant in Europe, in China the tech is advancing at pace. Nio now claims capacity for 30,000 swaps a day to lead the private market, but others are looking to close the gap.
Investors include battery maker CATL, which is launching a service called Evogo that’s claimed to swap batteries in less than a minute and for which Chinese car maker FAW Group will design a new MPV. Aulton New Energy claims to have collaborations with 20 car makers, including Changan and Dongfeng, to create EVs with swappable batteries. And Geely (which owns Lotus, Polestar and Volvo)
announced last year that it has plans to roll out 5000 battery swapping stations globally. In China, the technology is used for taxis and even trucks. Of the 10,513 ‘new energy’ HGVs sold last year in China, 31% had battery-swapping technology fitted, according to figures from Bloomberg NEF. If you’re thinking battery swapping comes closest to the ease of refuelling, the global oil companies agree with you.
Gibbs tried charging his Norwegian Nio and swapping its battery
