Nio launched the Jia Dian App in September 2019, claiming to support 90 percent of public charging piles in China, and saw over 1 million registered users in June 2022.

(Screenshots of Nio's Jia Dian App.)

In addition to aggressively building battery swap stations as well as chargers, Nio (NYSE: NIO) has built a mobile app that makes it easy for all electric vehicle (EV) owners to find charging facilities and has gained millions of users.

Jia Dian (加电 in Chinese), which literally means add power, has surpassed 4 million registered users, Shen Fei, Nio's vice president for power business, said today.

The mobile app, which Nio launched in September 2019, claims to support 90 percent of public charging piles in China.

As of October, there were 2.525 million public chargers in China, including 1.09 million DC chargers and 1.435 million AC chargers, according to the China Automotive Battery Innovation Alliance.

Nio currently has 2,187 battery swap stations, 2,009 supercharging stations with 9,407 chargers, and 1,464 destination charging stations with 10,976 chargers.

Despite the large number of public chargers in China, the quality of service varies by brand, and malfunctioning chargers are common.

One of the main marketing points of the Jia Dian App is that it supports users to submit their feedback on the charging piles they have used, a crowdsourcing approach that allows users to largely avoid going to malfunctioning charging piles.

The mobile app also supports route planning, which can recommend optimal routes for users, as well as charging facilities along the way, according to its description document.

The Jia Dian App saw over 1 million registered users in June 2022, over 2 million in January 2023, and over 3 million in July, according to Shen.

With more than 20,000 self-operated charging piles in China, Nio is the automotive brand with the largest number of chargers in the country, the company announced on November 20.

These charging piles cover 306 cities in China, providing a cumulative total of 29 million charging services and reducing carbon emissions by 419,959 tons of carbon equivalent, according to the company.

Nio's chargers are open to all brands of electric vehicle (EV) models, and about 80 percent of the power provided is used by other brands' EVs, it said earlier this month.

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