Shanghai (ZXZC)- NIO announced on Apr. 14 that the first 10 NIO third-generation Power Swap stations have come online.

The aforesaid battery swap stations are located in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Haikou, Qingdao, Hefei, Harbin, Wuxi, Chengdu, and Zhengzhou cities.

As of Apr. 13, 2023, NIO has deployed across China a total of 1,342 Power Swap stations (351 of which are situated along expressways) and 14,541 charging piles. It has also had access to over 680,000 third-party charging piles.

Photo credit: NIO

The third-generation Power Swap station was introduced at the NIO Day 2022. According to NIO, It achieves more efficient vehicle-station coordination and can complete up to 408 swaps per day, a 30% increase compared with the second-generation Power Swap station. Each third-generation Power Swap station is equipped with two LiDAR units and two NVIDIA DRIVE Orin X chips, achieving a total computing power of 508TOPS.

In addition, the third-generation Power Swap station supports the Automatic Summon & Swap feature, where the station is able to communicate with the car and automatically navigates the car to complete the swap. Moreover, with a maximum current of 660A and a maximum power of 500kW, it takes only 20 minutes to charge the 100kWh battery pack from 10% to 80%.

NIO plans to build 1,000 new Power Swap stations in China in 2023. To be specific, 400 battery-swapping stations will be along highways and 600 in urban areas with a focus on the country's third- and fourth-tier cities and counties.