The service barely affects battery swap stations' ability to provide service to car owners, with one station bringing in revenue in the tens of thousands of euros a year, according to a Nio vice president.

Shen said he expects battery swap stations in China to enter the vehicle-to-grid interaction space at scale in the form of aggregated virtual power plants, providing services including peak load regulation, and frequency regulation.

Nio currently has just one battery swap station in Denmark, which came online in March 2023, according to figures monitored by CnEVPost.

The company currently has 39 battery swap stations in Europe, with Germany having the most at 11, and Norway and the Netherlands both having nine each.

Nio now has 2,375 battery swap stations in China and aims to bring that number to 3,310 by the end of this year.

In August 2022, China had a brief power crunch during the summer peak, and some of Nio's battery swap stations were involved in helping to reduce the load on the grid.

Vehicle-grid interaction is encouraged in China at a time when new energy vehicles (NEVs) are being rapidly embraced.

On January 4, four government departments issued an implementation guideline on enhancing the interaction of NEVs with the power grid, stating that China's goal is for NEVs to become an important part of the energy storage system by 2030, providing 10 million kilowatts of regulation capacity to the power system.

($1 = RMB 7.1959)

Power crunch: How Nio's swap stations help reduce grid peak load