Nio added 90 battery swap stations in September, exiting the month with 517. As of October 7, the company's battery swap stations reached 523.

(Photo source: Nio)

As Nio continues to build battery swap stations at a rapid pace in September, more customers have easy access to the energy replenishment facility.

As of September 30, 36.01 percent of customers had at least one battery swap station within 3 kilometers of their homes, the company said Friday. That was up 1.67 percentage points from 34.34 percent at the end of August.

Taiyuan in Shanxi Province was the city with the highest percentage at 61.78 percent, followed by Shanghai with 51.83 percent.

It is worth noting that the number of battery swap stations in Shanghai is much higher than that in Taiyuan, and the higher ratio in the latter may be due to fewer local Nio users.

Nio added 90 battery swap stations in September, exiting the month with 517. As of October 7, the company had 523 battery swap stations, CnEVPost's data shows.

That leaves the average number of users served by a single battery swap station continuing to fall, at 312 as of September 30, down from 354 at the end of August and 606 at the end of April.

William Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Nio, mentioned at Nio Day 2020 that the company's goal is to have at least 500 battery swap stations by the end of this year. That goal was reached in September, one quarter ahead of schedule.

At the first Nio Power Day event in early July, Nio co-founder and president Qin Lihong updated the goal, saying the company plans to have more than 700 battery swap stations by the end of the year.

Qin also said at the time that as of early July, only 29 percent of users had a battery swap station within a 3-kilometer radius, which is unsatisfactory.

Nio wants to have 90 percent of users within a 3-kilometer radius of a battery swap station by 2025, he said.

Nio said Friday that 17 cities saw their first battery swap stations from the company in September.

As of September 30, the second generation of the facility accounted for more than 60 percent of Nio's 517 battery swap stations, according to the company.

During the just-passed National Day holiday in China, battery swap stations along the highway facilitated the replenishment needs of users traveling, seeing 4,300 services on October 1, a 140 percent increase over weekdays, according to Nio.