Author: CH_Chen
NIO – the “New Energy Vehicle Infrastructure Maniac”.
On July 6, NIO Power, the energy service system of NIO, celebrated its 4th anniversary, and NIO held its second Energy Day, titled “NIO Power Day 2022”.
When I heard this news, I was a bit confused: what new products could NIO release at this year’s NIO Power Day?
The 150 kWh semi-solid state battery, which was released last year, can be mass-produced only at the end of this year, and is basically the ceiling of the currently mass-producible battery technology. The second-generation battery swap station has only been in use for one year and three months, so it is unlikely that the third-generation swap station will be available so soon. As for super-fast charging, even with current technology, no charging efficiency can match battery swapping. At NIO’s Energy Day, fast charging cannot take the center stage.
To our surprise, this year’s NIO Power Day turned out to be a concluding conference rather than a new product launch. And even more surprising is that this concluding conference turned out to be quite informative. Through this conference, we can see more clearly what NIO is doing.
Years ago, when NIO’s founder and CEO Li Bin shouted out “Make charging as convenient as refueling”, many onlookers saw it as a joke, but over the years, NIO has been really serious about it.
“New Energy Vehicle Infrastructure Maniac”
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call NIO the “New Energy Vehicle Infrastructure Maniac”. Among all the automakers, NIO is the most active and even the most radical in deploying new energy vehicle infrastructure.
As of July 6, 2022, NIO has built 1,011 battery swap stations in China (including 256 on expressways), 1,681 charging stations (with 9,603 charging piles), and more than 520,000 third-party charging piles. NIO has provided over 10 million swap services and over 820,000 one-click charging services to users.
I know there are many people on the Internet who are not optimistic about the battery swap model, and there are still many people who question its high investment, low profitability, and lack of universality, believing that the battery swap has no future. However, with the 1,000+ swap stations and 10 million swaps, whether the swap model is feasible should no longer be a question.
And NIO’s infrastructure construction is not limited to the public domain. In helping users install home charging piles, NIO may be the most diligent among all automakers.Up until July 6, 2022, NIO has installed 127,528 home chargers for its users, with over 60% of NIO users owning home chargers. This data is among the top of all publicly available data from car brands.
Undoubtedly, home charging remains the most convenient way for energy replenishment. With a home charger, recharging your car is already more convenient than refueling it during daily commutes. Simply plug in the charging gun upon arriving home, and the energy replenishment will be complete in about 10 seconds.
To help users install home chargers, NIO not only provides free home chargers and installation services for all its models, it also assists users in communicating with property management and other relevant departments. In some cases, NIO has even resorted to legal measures to help users install charging stations. Furthermore, NIO has publicly announced that its service team can help coordinate the installation of home chargers for users of other brands of new energy vehicles, free of charge.
With heavy investments in capital and team, NIO users have achieved a “power coverage rate” of 62.1% for residential areas, established a high-speed battery-swapping network covering 20,000 kilometers across four major urban clusters, and built 31 Power Up Plan destination charging routes.
The concept of “power coverage for residential areas” originates from the NIO community, referring to the coverage of swapping stations within 3 kilometers of a user’s residence or workplace. When driving in the city, users can conveniently swap batteries.
The high-speed battery-swapping network in four major urban clusters running through five north-south and three east-west highways is aimed at long-distance travel. NIO users can now recharge their vehicles by swapping batteries along the eight most important national highways in China.
The Power Up Plan destination charging routes are aimed at road trips. NIO has already established electrified scenic routes such as the Sichuan-Tibet Line, the Yunnan-Tibet Line, and the China North Pole Line, making it easy to travel by electric vehicles.
The comprehensive energy replenishment system of NIO includes swapping stations, superchargers, destination chargers, home chargers, and “milkmaid” vehicles (mobile charging vehicles). In addition to portable charging guns, fast, slow, fixed, and mobile charging methods are all available in the NIO system.
It is worth mentioning that NIO’s energy replenishment system is not only available to NIO users, but it is open to the entire industry. According to official data, NIO’s one-click charging service has served 53 other brands of new energy vehicles, and more than 80% of NIO’s charging stations are used to recharge non-NIO brands of vehicles.At this year’s NIO Power Day, NIO’s CEO, Li Hong Qin, once again emphasized that NIO’s battery swapping stations and standards are open to the entire industry.
However, it is indeed difficult to implement this in practice. If one intends to use NIO’s battery swapping stations, it is necessary to adapt from the model development stage. There have been rumors before, but there is still no definite news showing that other manufacturers have confirmed to join NIO’s battery swapping system.
Compared to the visible and tangible hardware strength, NIO’s energy service software capability is often easily overlooked.
In order to maximize the charging resources, NIO has developed NIO Power Cloud based on AIoT technology, which is the brain of the NIO Power service network that commands and coordinates all hardware resources.
NIO Power Cloud has the ability of intelligent site selection, intelligent operation and maintenance, and intelligent recommendation.
Intelligent site selection can assist in decision-making for new charging facilities based on big data, real-time analysis of user charging demand, heat information, service capability and load status of each charging facility, which is also the key to NIO’s battery swapping stations meeting the growing user demand.
Intelligent operation and maintenance uses digital twin technology to realize the visualization and remote detection of the operation status of the battery swapping stations, making it convenient for back-end operation and maintenance personnel to grasp the equipment status. At the same time, it can read the operation status of all self-built charging facilities in real time, and each battery swap and recharge is under NIO’s control.
Intelligent recommendation is a key interactive part for users’ travel. In the charging map within NIO’s APP and the independent APP “Charging” that is available to all new energy vehicle owners, NIO Power Cloud can intelligently recommend travel routes and energy supplement methods by comprehensively integrating data from all charging stations, real-time traffic information, vehicle range, and user charging strategies.
More importantly, NIO’s charging map has accumulated more than 950,000 real usage evaluations, which can help users accurately understand the availability of various charging resources, avoiding the situation of severe parking and damaged charging stations. It can be said that it is currently the most user-friendly electric vehicle energy supplement software on the market.NIO defines four user-perceptible charging methods, including charging at home or other locations, battery swapping, one-click charging, and convenient charging on the go, as “convenient charging.” According to official data, NIO users received 88.8% of their total charging from convenient scenarios in June, including 52.3% from battery swapping, 24.2% from home or other location charging, 0.9% from one-click charging, and 11.4% from charging on the go. Perhaps we cannot yet definitively say that charging is more convenient than refueling, but for users, charging is no longer a troublesome or annoying task.
The future: super fast charging + third-generation battery swapping stations!
Although NIO Power Day is not a traditional press conference, NIO still casually revealed some heavyweight content.
There has been a long-standing debate on the internet over whether high-voltage fast charging or battery swapping is better, but many people overlook an obvious fact—that battery swapping and fast charging are not mutually exclusive.
At NIO Power Day, NIO unveiled a 500 kW super fast charging station with a peak current of up to 650A that uses liquid-cooled cables that are thinner and more lightweight. What’s more, it will be put into use by the end of this year!
In addition, NIO announced that the third-generation battery swapping station will be released at the end of this year or the beginning of next year, with more battery compartments, higher swapping efficiency, and better compatibility, and support for 800V high-voltage architecture, with corresponding 800V high-voltage battery packs and models under development.
Few words, big things.
500kW super charging stations and 800V high-voltage fast charging are not new things, and NIO’s launch is relatively late, but NIO’s large-scale landing in China may be the fastest, after all, it has the tradition of “infrastructure madness” and strong financial ability—while NIO may be slow in doing other things, its speed in infrastructure construction is completely reliable.
Moreover, the combination of high-voltage fast charging and battery swapping stations may be the key to opening the door to a new world.
Imagine, battery swapping stations can fully charge a battery in 30 minutes and swap a battery in just 3 minutes. Each swapping station only needs 10 batteries to maintain the cycle and can serve up to 480 vehicles a day while occupying only 4 parking spaces. For users, the energy replenishment time is just 3 minutes apart from the waiting time in line, and it can be fully automated—vehicles automatically park into the swapping station and batteries are automatically swapped. These advantages outperform those of super charging.
The advantages of battery swapping are not only limited to this. Each battery swapping station is equivalent to a mini energy storage station. In the future, NIO will continue to explore interactions with the power grid, using the energy storage capacity of battery swapping stations to help the power grid with peak shaving, filling valleys or consuming excess new energy.
At last year’s NIO Day, Li Bin announced that “by 2025, 4,000 battery swapping stations will be built globally, of which more than 3,000 will be in China.” At NIO Power Day 2022, NIO further refined this target:
- By 2025, NIO aims to achieve a coverage rate of 90% for the “Electric Zone House”.
- By 2025, the high-speed battery swapping network for the “Nine Vertical and Nine Horizontal Nineteen Major Urban Areas” will be completed.
- By 2023, the battery swapping route for G3, G40, and G42 will be completed, forming a high-speed battery swapping network for the “Six Vertical and Five Horizontal Nine Major Urban Areas”.
- By 2025, a total of 168 Power Up Plan destination charging routes will be built globally.
As can be seen, NIO is extremely serious and devoted to energy regeneration both on the hardware and software levels.
“Making charging more convenient than refueling” is not only a slogan for NIO but also a vision-level goal for the company.
What NIO is doing not only serves NIO users but also benefits the entire new energy vehicle industry. Qin Lihong once said, “Electric vehicle companies that do not serve energy are opportunists,” and NIO is clearly not an opportunistic or selfish enterprise.
Whether you accept it or not, NIO’s exploration and contribution in energy regeneration are worthy of respect.
Under the trend of the development of new energy vehicles, we need more “Infrastructure Maniacs” like NIO.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.