Shanghai (ZXZC)- On November 21, Changan Auto and NIO signed a cooperative agreement in Chongqing city on battery swap-related businesses. This groundbreaking collaboration aims to establish battery swap standards, facilitate the construction and sharing of battery swap networks, engage in joint R&D of battery-swap-enabled vehicle models, and implement an efficient battery asset management system.

This marks the initiation of NIO's collaboration with an automobile company in the battery swap sector.

Photo credit: NIO

NIO's Founder, Chairman, and CEO, William Bin Li, emphasized NIO's commitment to industry-wide openness from the very beginning of its battery swap services. Mr. Li drew parallels between NIO's battery swap network and energy cloud services to internet cloud infrastructure, highlighting its path from infrastructure development and internal integration, to all scenario validation and external openness. With five years of evolution, NIO's power swap network and energy cloud have accumulated substantial experience in technology R&D, and facility construction and operations, positioning NIO's battery swap business to open up to the broader industry.

Beyond the collaboration with Changan Auto, Mr. Li revealed in an internal briefing on November 20 that discussions are underway with 4-5 other automotive companies for potential collaborations on battery swap business.

In February of this year, Mr. Li announced NIO's plan to add 1,000 new battery swap stations in 2023, a significant increase from the 400-station target initially set at the NIO Day in December last year. By the end of this year, NIO aims to have over 2,300 battery swap stations nationwide, surging from the 1,305 stations in operation by the end of 2022.

On November 20, NIO celebrated the official launch of its 2,100th battery swap station in China, which is located at the Hukou Service Area on the G22 Qinglan Expressway. With this milestone, NIO's national network of power swap stations has reached a cumulative total of 2,103.