The concept of battery swapping was often bandied about a decade ago. It was quickly deemed too complicated, mainstream automakers largely ignored it, and the whole idea faltered. Oh, except for in China, where the concept is going gangbusters.
It’s all thanks to Nio, the Chinese EV manufacturer first established in 2014. It’s been a long road to legitimacy for the upstart company. In the last decade, it has attracted big name investors, dodged bankruptcy, and gone multinational. In all that time, it’s been quietly working away on a concept that most of its rivals thought pointless and irrelevant.
The numbers don’t lie, however. Nio’s battery swapping service isn’t just an idea or some dinky pilot program. This month saw Nio open its 2,500th battery swap station, and it isn’t stopping there. These things are out there, operational, and serving the public on a daily basis.
Big Battery Business
Starting in 2018, it took Nio four long years to install its first 1,000 swap stations. As reported by Car News China, though, the company has gotten much faster, delivering the second thousand in just 15 months. Another 9 months after that it added five hundred more.
This isn’t a “build it and they will come” scenario, either. On Nio’s live tracking website, the company has already recorded over 49.5 million battery swaps across its sprawling network. At the time of this writing, swaps were occurring at a rate of almost a hundred every minute. Back-of-the-envelope maths suggests the company should cross the 50 million swap threshold in the next week or two.
Battery swapping sounds wild if you’ve never seen it before, but it’s been routine for Nio owners for years.
Nio has done battery swapping the right way. For one, it made it quick, easy, and automatic. Drivers simply have to pull into a battery swap station, at which point the task is handled automatically by robot. The car’s battery is plucked out from below, and a new fully-charged battery is swapped in, all in under five minutes. The company’s latest fourth-generation stations get that down to under 2.5 minutes, and it’s all activated by a simple tap on the car’s infotainment screen. Swaps typically cost around $8 to $15 USD, including the electricity charges.
Concerns around battery quality or damage don’t really matter, either. Nio’s battery swap stations check the state of each battery when they are dropped off empty for charging. Besides, even if you did get stuck with a poorly-performing battery, you could simply drive back to the swap station and get another one. Nor do customers have to worry about their vehicle’s battery aging over time. They’re forever swapping the battery out, with newer batteries continually introduced into the network.
The company also allows owners to buy a vehicle and rent a battery under its “Battery as a Service” model. This has the side effect of reducing the cost of entry when purchasing a Nio vehicle, as the battery is paid for on a month-by-month basis instead of purchasing the whole thing up front. This can knock 70,000 RMB ($9,640 USD) off the purchase price of a car. In exchange, users pay a monthly rental of 728 RMB ($100 USD) for a 75 kWh battery pack, or a higher fee of 1,680 RMB ($230 USD) for a larger 100 kWh battery.
Battery swapping kind of changes the game for EVs. No more does a taxi driver have to wait half an hour to recharge in between fares. Instead, they can swap a battery and get straight back out there. Or, indeed even swap with a passenger in tow, as this great video from @blondieinchina demonstrates:
As a company, Nio is going hard on nailing the charging experience, even outside battery swapping. The company has developed ultra-fast chargers, capable of delivering up to 640 kW at peak power. It’s intended for vehicles like the Nio ET9, which can charge at rates up to 600 kW. The special high-powered charge stations are paired with what Nio says is the industry’s lightest water-cooled charging cable, weighing in at just 5.3 pounds.
Nio even offers an incredibly unique personal service where you can call an assistant to charge your car for you. Through a Nio app, you request a charge for your EV. Someone comes out, picks up your car, and drives it to a charger or swap station. They then return the car to you fully charged.
Too busy to recharge your car? You can click a button and Nio will send someone to do it for you.
These are all big achievements for an automaker that is still very new to the industry. The company’s first mass-produced vehicle only rolled off the production line in 2018. Nio built its 500,000th vehicle in May this year. It’s delivering on the order of 20,000 vehicles a month, but has a long way to go to reach the scale of other big players in the EV space.
Why Haven’t I Heard Of This?
If you’re not across Nio’s accomplishments, it’s because thus far, they’ve largely happened within China. The country remains Nio’s biggest market, and home to the majority of its battery swap stations. 2,456 are installed across the length and breadth of China.
In contrast, just over 50 swap stations have been installed across Europe. 16 of those battery swap stations are installed in EV-loving Norway, with a further 17 in Germany. Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands host swap stations as well, as the company steadily builds out its network. Since opening its first station in 2022, Nio owners have completed over 63,000 swaps in Europe. It’s not nothing, but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to what’s going on in China.
On July 15th, the 50th Power Swap Station in Europe officially opens in Norway. This latest Power Swap Station, located in Oslo, is a significant landmark in our commitment to developing a European infrastructure that supports smooth travel for every NIO user.
Since opening the… pic.twitter.com/Q4N0GZL4Ej
— NIO (@NIOGlobal) July 16, 2024
Nio does plan to come to the US, in due time. A timetable of 2025 was floated a while back, but it’s not a firm commitment. As for battery swapping stations, well… it appears that’s not really on the cards just yet. Meanwhile, every other US-market automaker has either ignored battery swapping, or tried it and bailed out. Pilot programs were out there a decade ago, including Tesla’s, but they all came to nought.
There’s also one big question that always looms over any conversation about battery swapping. What about cross-compatibility? Indeed, one of the reasons battery swapping has never taken off in the West is because different automakers use completely different battery designs. Nio has, by and large, simply ignored this problem. It just set about building its own vehicles with interchangeable batteries, expanding its swap station network all the while.
That’s not to say Nio is playing on its own, though. It’s signed alliance agreements with Changan, Geely, JAC, GAC, and Chery and others regarding cooperation around battery swapping and charging infrastructure—and Lotus, too! None of these other automakers yet sell vehicles with compatible batteries. However, GAC has announced its upcoming second-gen Aion V crossover, and it’s believed at least one variant will offer battery swapping. Hopes are that other automakers will soon follow suit.
Nio has proven that battery swapping can work, and it’s already built the swap stations to boot. All other automakers need to do is jump on board and redesign their vehicles to suit.
Can It Reach The West?
Nio seems to have established battery swapping in China through sheer bloody-mindedness. Progress in Europe is slower, with the company recently revising a target of 120 stations down to 80 by the end of this year. That’s no surprise, given that things like government permits and planning approvals can move much more slowly in the West.
Whether it can make battery swapping work overseas comes down to simple numbers. While there are a great many Nio vehicles being sold in China, there are fewer reaching foreign shores. Without the install base, it’s hard to run a battery-swapping network on a profitable and sustainable basis. Nio needs to sell a lot of vehicles to justify the investment, and it ideally needs other automakers to jump on board and do the same.
On July 15th, the 50th Power Swap Station in Europe officially opens in Norway. This latest Power Swap Station, located in Oslo, is a significant landmark in our commitment to developing a European infrastructure that supports smooth travel for every NIO user.
Since opening the… pic.twitter.com/Q4N0GZL4Ej
— NIO (@NIOGlobal) July 16, 2024
Nio is pushing into Europe, but things are moving slowly compared to its efforts at home.
It’s the same chicken-and-egg infrastructure problem that EV charging has faced in general. If there is a huge network of battery swap stations up and running, people will be more likely to buy a suitable EV. The problem is that without the cars to support the infrastructure, there’s no business case to build out the network. It all rests on Nio and other automakers making big sales in Europe of swap-compatible vehicles.
Ultimately, time will tell us whether Nio can pull this off. Until then? EV battery swaps will remain a lovely curio for tourists in China, and a great boon to local Nio owners.
For a while I’ve thought meeting in the middle is the way to go. One permanent battery good for about 100-150 miles of range for daily driving duties. Still more than needed for 99% of daily commutes and less weight to carry around. Then have an expansion bay or 2 to add say another 200 miles worth of battery, which can be rented before a road trip and swapped along the way as it runs out, or even just recharged if you have the time.
There is a company called Gogoro attempting to do this in Taiwan and India but with scooters.
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/gogoro-make-e-scooter-bikes-india-rolls-out-battery-swap-network-2023-12-12/
Never understood why this wasn’t the method to charge batteries in the first place.
Back when I was studying aboard in college (twenty years ago) we saw a tech demo in Japan for an EV battery service station. Looked exactly like a gas station, except it had a lift. Car got hoisted up, technician went below, pulled out four or five batteries, and replaced it with fresh ones. Car was dropped back down. Whole process was about five to ten minutes.
China has battery-swapping, America has wife-swapping. It’s a cultural difference worth noting.
Instructions unclear, traded wife for battery.
This seems like such a good idea, but isn’t.
let’s imagine 3 standardized form factors across the whole industry :
The standardization is in the external size and the access points ( power and control plugs ),
What’s in the battery module itself can vary, and some handshake through the control plug will tell the charging station everything it needs to know to charge and handle the battery it just removed from a car.
That way there’s no lock in with a technology that becomes obsolete…New battery types can pe put beside older models while the older models are being phased out.
I think getting automakers to converge on just 3 battery formats will be impossible. It’s also not a desirable outcome from a competitive standpoint.
Most of those issues are solvable and there are also counterpoints in favor of battery swapping:
Battery degradation (and cell damage) is rendered irrelevant. This is especially important in the EV used car market where cars with degraded batteries are severely depreciated or useless due to the reduced range. Those cars become essentially landfill waste/get crushed (e.g. early Nissan Leafs).EV range estimates remain more consistent (and can even increase with advancements in battery tech) through the car’s lifetime as battery degradation is removed from the equation.Batteries don’t need to be fast charged, which extends their usable lifetime.EVs may become simpler and lighter if complex battery temperature management systems are migrated to the swapping stations. More so if fast charging and degradation due to heat are no longer factors to worry about. This may balance out additional weight due to chassis reinforcement or even come out ahead.Evolution in battery tech can directly benefit existing EV owners.Even if this whole idea doesn’t work, the very fact that it’s been taking seriously and other manufacturers are surely keeping a close eye on it is encouraging for the feasibility of our emissions-free vehicle future. I would love to see more investment into hydrogen alternatives as well.
Well, my bullet points went to shit for some reason. It was nice and tidy when I left my comment, sigh. Can’t edit anymore.
I am convinced concern about battery degradation is the biggest factor holding back EV adoption — and it makes sense: a cellphone battery lasts 3 years, an electric drill battery lasts 3 years, a laptop battery lasts 3 year, a camera battery lasts 3 years … why shouldn’t an EV battery last 3 years as well?
The reasons are:
To address your points:
Great summary – it wasn’t ever viable and will be increasingly less so as charging times improve. The difference between a 3 minute swap and a 10 minute charge is negligible given the huge capital investment battery swap stations are.
You also run into the same issues as bike share. Batteries will need to be reallocated and moved constantly – that also has a cost.
Re: the structural batteries, that’s a great point. It’s safer, more rigid, less complex and lighter. Compromising the whole car around the ability to very rarely swap the battery on a road trip is a crazy design decision.
A somewhat equivalent in the air-coolded VW world was RVEECO. Rebuilt Volkswagen Engine Exchange Company in Berkeley California. Their intent was to be able to drive in and exchange your engine for one of their rebuilts. They somewhat morphed into selling external oil coolers for VWs. Unfortunately leaks in them were all too common.
When you exchange batteries at just one station, you are co-mingling electrons with all the other vehicles that swapped there. Ewww.
Thanks awesome. All of the sudden this Chinese invasion/takeover doesn’t seem so bad. Tesla? Never heard of her…
What is troubling me about this is it seems that it means there must be even more batteries than not swapping batteries. Every car is going to have a battery in it and you’d need a bank of charged batteries on standby waiting to be swapped. I guess with quick swap times you could have a smaller battery, but it doesn’t solve the distance between swap times and would still add extra stops in a trip.
Correct, and you’d need to move those batteries around as some facilities will always have a glut while others run dry. The costs of all this compared to just a fast charger (getting faster all the time) is crazy.
Today it’s 8 minutes. In 10 years it will be sub 1. I love this, and this is the answer.
Battery swapping in America; “When I bought this car, I paid for the TruCoat. Does this battery have the TruCoat?”
All batteries have the TruCoat. If there’s one place you don’t want oxidation problems it’s in the battery!
remember this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company)
Yep, in the late naughts the company I was working for was approached as a prospective supplier for Better Place. I believe they wanted to build 10000 charging stations. I remember driving past an unused one in Nyborg, DK a few years later.
The question of battery swapping has never been one of feasibility, but value. Of course it’s possible, but is it better? Is it cost effective?
The automated hardware shown is no joke. I approve of the safety precautions, but I also know from experience that kind of equipment is not cheap, and requires regular cleaning and maintenance.Every video I’ve seen has a Nio employee monitoring the station, implying every station is staffed. Which makes sense, there’s a lot that could go wrong.Based on recent numbers, Nio averages around 8000 swaps per station per year, or <1 swap per station per hour. At $8-$15 per swap, these stations are not even covering the cost of staffing, let alone the cost of construction, maintenance, and electricity. Charitably, this is a loss leader.Because Nio relies so heavily on state-owned manufacturing (critically in Xinjiang), we simply do not know what their business model and pricing would look like if slave labor was removed from the equation.Bjorn Nyland and Out of Spec have both filmed the battery swapping process. It takes 8 minutes when you include setup. That’s still pretty good, but only a marginal improvement over an 800V pack.One downside of swapping is throughput. When you have only one stall, queues get brutal, which is why Nio also has fast chargers at their swapping stations. During the traffic of 2021 Golden Week, Nio’s average wait times increased to 14 minutes, and as a result nearly half their recharging was done by DCFC instead of swapping.During asymmetrical traffic (such as everyone showing up for a big game), you run the risk of running out of batteries and shutting down the swap station. No word yet on how Nio handles this, though it’s safe to say they don’t count closed stations in their wait time figures.
Unrelated to batteries, I suspect Nio will need a marquee to break into North America, because they have a bunch of idiosyncrasies that won’t go over well. The rear seats in the ET9 don’t fold, and Nomi is the most irritating and intrusive assistant since Clippy. Like, astonishingly abrasive.
Okay, the formatting on this website is killing me. That was a bulletpoint list, not a wall of text.
For whatever reason,
<ul>and<ol>tags don’t persist after you edit, even though they still show up in the input box. I think you can delete everything and paste the text with tags back in and then make your changes and it will work, but it’s been a while since I’ve tried it.“Because Nio relies so heavily on state-owned manufacturing (critically in Xinjiang), we simply do not know what their business model and pricing would look like if slave labor was removed from the equation.”
Or if there is any slave labor in the NIO pipeline at all.
“At $8-$15 per swap, these stations are not even covering the cost of staffing, let alone the cost of construction, maintenance, and electricity. Charitably, this is a loss leader.”
It’s beta development so subsidizing the cost to build public acceptance and patience while ironing out the bugs is a good idea.
Plus communism.
“During the traffic of 2021 Golden Week, Nio’s average wait times increased to 14 minutes, and as a result nearly half their recharging was done by DCFC instead of swapping.”
As was mentioned over half the stations have been built since 2021 and they are on v4 with much faster swap times so presumably Golden Week wait times have dropped as well.
“During asymmetrical traffic (such as everyone showing up for a big game), you run the risk of running out of batteries and shutting down the swap station. No word yet on how Nio handles this, though it’s safe to say they don’t count closed stations in their wait time figures.”
If it’s a “big game” or other multi hour event IMO the way to go would be an automated valet service in which your car drops you off at the door, parks itself in the wayback lot to wait its turn, gets swapped at some point during sportsball (and maybe gets a bath too to ensure the swap goes well), reparks itself in the way back lot and comes to get you when sportsball is over all the while sending you updates on the process.
Good points all around, but this:
Great disturbance in the force. Millions of engineers crying out, silenced, you know the drill. Parking lots sound safer because of lower speed, but they’re harder for automated systems than highways because of how unpredictable (and full of pedestrians) they can be. I think it’ll work eventually, but basically, many Bothans will have to die for it first.
Which is why it’s an automated valet. No pedestrians. The entire lot would be off limits to anyone not escorted by venue staff with everyone wearing RFID transponders to let the system know exactly where they are so as to give them a wide berth.
Such an escort would only be for an emergency, otherwise if someone needs their car they call for it which is a lot more convenient than hoofing it all the way out to the way back lot, especially if said lot is in a shopping mall, doubly so for folks with mobility issues.
In the case of a fire the cars would move out of harms way starting with the ones nearest the blaze while also leaving a clear path for first responders. Those first responders would of course have RFID tags incorporated into their kit so the system would work with their efforts. The lot might even automatically start fighting the fire on its own.
“What about cross-compatibility? Indeed, one of the reasons battery swapping has never taken off in the West is because different automakers use completely different battery designs. Nio has, by and large, simply ignored this problem. It just set about building its own vehicles with interchangeable batteries, expanding its swap station network all the while.”
And yet Tesla build their supercharger network based on a Tesla only standard.
“If you build it, they will come.”
*built*
Tesla did it on there own and the rest are begrudgingly following. It will take another pushy rich douche like Elon to make this happen in the US, though in reality it should be Tesla anyway since they have undercarriage access now and could probably retro-design a swap in carriage for existing models that would otherwise be mechanically totaled when a 20K battery swap bill comes across a desk.
“It will take another pushy rich douche like Elon to make this happen in the US”
Well you got one running for president but if that were to happen unfortunately EVs are on his “to don’t” list.
A rich Douche that wants to pander to the EV crowd…..Fixed
I am surprised you consider the Don to be “Rich”
Richer than me anyway.
me too I suppose, but many seem to think it is smoke and mirrors.
Like most things financial.
I fear we won’t see this sort of tech for a long time due to “not from here” syndrome… JYE-NAH is too much of a boogieman among a certain crowd. Good ideas can come from anywhere.
NIO’s one of the only Chinese startups that I’m actively rooting for. Great looking cars (especially their wagon EV) and actually reasonably priced, at least locally in China. NIO actually came to our campus in 2019 when I was doing my bachelors program; tutors got to test-drive the then-new ES8 and students got to ride along. It was my first ride in an EV and it definitely left a lasting impression. I respect BYD’s tech but their cars are just too butt-ugly (except for the Seagull, love the looks but devoid of the coveted small-car driving dynamics)
They seem to have hit some snags recently though; sales have been slipping and their new budget model doesn’t support the existing swap network, which doesn’t really help adoption? I’m really hoping that they don’t join the ranks of Weltmeister or HiPhi, I’d love to snag myself one of the ET5 wagons in a few years after depreciation does its thing.
This has a similar problem to regular charging though, how will it work when scaled up to every vehicle on the road? (assuming a standard actually happened, which is a longshot)
To do the same volume as a busy gas station, the battery storage (and systems to move them) would need to be absolutely massive, and hugely expensive. Better than installing hundreds/thousands of chargers you’d need to handle volume on a holiday, but worth considering still.
I see these as complementing charging stations, not replacing them.
The only time swapping 3-500 miles of range in 5 minutes is really necessary is on road trips. Otherwise it’s probably cheaper to just charge at home or use public chargers. So really a few of these swapping stations on rural interstates would cover 90% of the use at a fraction of the cost.
Yeah, but like I said, same problem as regulars chargers, it will work fine monday to friday. But come thanksgiving, you will basically have to just give up on seeing grandma because the lines for the chargers will be enormous/the swappers won’t have any charged batteries
I agree with V10omous’ idea of having these swapping stations as a complement to charging, but to answer what you say about battery storage, I could see these stations being as large as a Buc-ee’s to accommodate high volume.
The problem with battery swapping is that you have to commit to a package of the size, mass, electrical connector type and position, coolant connector type and position, lifting points and voltage, and apply that to enough cars to make swapping batteries workable.
All of those features are a compromise. We haven’t picked a common battery format for cell phones, or even flashlights, which are the simplest battery powered device. Tweaking the compromise one way or another and you can get more range, or less mass, or more performance, these are things OEMs don’t want to share with their competitors, or lock themselves in to so they fall behind as technology improves.
I like the concept, but it means massive investment every time the level of technology goes up.
Even something simple like changing the mass is going to affect ride and handling, so more energy dense batteries won’t bring a reduction is vehicle mass or packaging improvements.
As battery technology matures, and we reach the stage where batteries are all basically the same (like how every ICE manufacturer has a 2.0 turbo) then it starts making sense to pick two or three standard sizes for different vehicle types, and we can all join in.
In the a similar manner to how carmakers jumped on the Tesla charging standard, automakers need to settle on a single battery standard so that universal, interchangeable batteries become a thing. You could still have batteries that are bigger or smaller, in terms of storage and longevity just like batteries for everything else. But bargain store AAs and Energizer AAs both fit and will run your flashlight. If we’re designing toward this level of ubiquity, that is good. If not, embrace the chaos.
I thought in Europe Tesla changed to the EU standard connector?
I think this would be very hard. A Rivian R3 and an R1 are going to have batteries that, by necessity are very different in dimensions. A smaller car simply does not have the room for batteries that a big one does and I don’t see the workaround. I would be interested to see how Nio has addressed that aspect of it all. Though I guess it might be possible if you had a standard battery size and shape and the bigger cars just get more of them? So something massive like a Hummer EV gets 5 batteries that are interchangeable with the one in a bolt. It would be a logistical nightmare to get everyone on the same page on it but I suppose it could be doable in theory.
I think it more likely that manufacturers will partner on standardizing battery sizes within their own alliances before they settle on a universal one. Toyota-Subaru-Mazda might have one style of battery while Honda-Nissan-Mitsubishi will have another. This could work but they would need to have similar swapping methods and the stations that do the swaps would need to carry multiple kinds of batteries. Eventually though, the ideal would be full standardization.
The beauty of this is that they are showing that it can be done. Having precedence is huge, especially for investors and shareholders who don’t like to risk too much.
Well, the real question is whether it can be done profitably. Given the capital expense of each station, as well as the fact that they all need to be staffed apparently, my guess would be the answer is “No”, and that’s before you get into the engineering challenges it introduces to vehicle design. Business models that work in China are not guaranteed to work anywhere else, because market conditions are substantially different there.
Fast charging is approaching this speed anyway, which will render swapping obsolete.
Once the speed difference is gone, you’re left with all the pitfalls of swapping (expensive, infrastructure heavy, logistically difficult, forced standards, structural compromises…)
Another good point. Also substantially easier to build multiple chargers at a location, compared to a single swap station which will, for any given service location, increase the number of customers who can be serviced in parallel, which would also drive up your incidental sales that actually drive profits (ie- gas stations make their money on the chips and red bull you buy after filling up with the gas they barely break even on).
I’m glad they seem to be making it work. It makes sense on so many levels. Big battery for road trips or small for daily use – just pick the right option. Apartment dwellers and those without charging are not left stranded at some remote location for an hour. Regular rotation and hopefully refurbishment of batteries as they age. I doubt it will ever fly here in the States.
If we can standardize charge connectors, then I have hope that one day we can standardize battery sizes, mounting, and connections. It’s the only way this can become viable in the US. Primarily because an OEM would never invest in an infrastructure here to make these swaps easily accessible. However, they would leave it to the aftermarket and, assuming they could standardize like I mentioned previously, various aftermarket companies could thrive at this and become as common as gas stations off of the Eisenhower. Add a subscription model to it and watch the concept thrive.
As long as you have recourse if you end up getting a dud swapped in (I know you will swap it back eventually, but I’m thinking about on a long trip where time is of the essence) this sounds awesome and I can’t wait for it to become a bigger deal in the US.
Keeping the swaps within a single manufacturer has always made more sense for warranty and liability purposes, even if costs are a bit higher as a result.
The online consensus is that while not officially disclosed, NIO’s threshold for pulling batteries from circulation is in the 85-90% capacity range. That seems pretty reasonable.
Apparently they also went with a more modular internal structure because of an expectation that the batteries would be serviceable at that point, which isn’t a reasonable expectation for permanent batteries.
Good info, thanks