NIO’s first battery swap station for electrical automobiles in Germany has been formally deployed, forward of the market launch of the NIO ET7 mannequin later this 12 months.

The station is situated in Zusmarshausen, within the southern a part of the nation, on the A8 freeway between Munich and Stuttgart.

We imagine that that is the station that was proven earlier this month leaving the NIO Energy Europe Plant in Hungary. Along with two stations put in in Norway (one in January and one in August), there are at the moment three in Europe.

By the top of 2025, NIO want to set up over 4,000 such stations, together with 1,000 or so outdoors China.

For reference, in China, the corporate already put in greater than 1,100 stations (for a complete of over 238,000 automobiles delivered up to now).

Whereas battery swap stations are a particular characteristic of NIO automobiles, let’s observe that the corporate has put in additionally over 1,000 quick charging stations with greater than 5,360 particular person stalls and over 870 vacation spot charging stations (AC, regular charging velocity) with roughly 5,470 particular person stalls.

Presently, all NIO electrical automobile fashions are appropriate with the battery swap stations, as a result of the corporate makes use of a standardized battery pack (externally) with two capability ranges (a 3rd one is within the pipeline).

Because the battery know-how improves, the corporate most likely will merely replace the battery capability by way of the usage of new modules, sustaining the pack’s compatibility.

It already occurred in China in 2021, when a brand new standard-range, hybrid-cell battery pack (NCM/LFP) with a 75 kWh changed the earlier NCM pack, which had a capability of 70 kWh.

The opposite sort is 100 kWh (NCM 811 sort), whereas a high-end 150 kWh model most likely will arrive sooner or later.

The NIO’s second-generation Energy Swap Station 2.0, launched in April 2021, is sort of succesful with the potential for use as soon as each a number of minutes. In principle, it ought to enable to rapidly replenish vary and proceed long-distance journey.

The two.0 system has a complete of 14 battery slots – 13 battery packs (vs 5 within the 1.0 model) and an empty slot to choose up a discharged battery (or previous/earlier era battery when upgrading). In accordance with NIO, they’re able to finishing as much as 312 battery swaps per day (24 hours), which might imply 4.6 minutes or near 277 seconds per swap (together with the automated parking.