Nio's battery swap technology beat out 25 competitors in the final selection.

(Image credit: Nio)

Nio's (NYSE: NIO) battery swap technology has won a prestigious award in China, marking the latest recognition it has received.

Nio's battery swap technology for electric vehicles won first prize in the 2022 Science and Technology Progress Award of the Chinese Society of Automotive Engineers (China SEA), Shen Fei, senior vice president of Nio Power, said in a post on the company's app Thursday.

This is the second time Nio has won the award after winning it in 2021 for the ES8.

The China SEA's Science and Technology Progress Award has existed for more than 20 years and is one of the highest profile, most authoritative and influential science and technology awards in China's automotive industry, according to the article.

Its judging committee is composed of experts and scholars with leading academic levels from academia and industry.

In this year's competition, Nio's battery swap technology faced 134 competitors in the initial evaluation and 25 in the final selection.

Nio's technology has significant economic and social benefits, and is at an international leading level in terms of body-battery separation, intelligent battery swap and multi-network fusion, said the China SEA.

Nio officially unveiled its third-generation battery swap station at the Nio Day 2022 event held in Hefei, Anhui province on December 24, allowing for improved efficiency in vehicle battery replacement.

The new battery swap station can store up to 21 battery packs, up from 13 in its predecessor and 5 in the first generation of the facility.

The third-generation battery swap station increases the daily service capacity of a single station to 408, a 30 percent increase over the second-generation station.

As of December 30, Nio had 1,294 battery swap stations in China, 341 of which are located along highways. It also has 2,254 charging stations, providing 13,206 charging piles and access to more than 630,000 third-party charging piles.

Nio expects to have more than 1,700 battery swap stations and more than 20,000 charging piles in China by the end of 2023.

The company plans to have a cumulative total of 120 battery swap stations in Europe by the end of 2023, compared to the current 10.