Gasgoo Munich-NIO's 9,000th charging and battery swap station officially went online in Ankang, Shaanxi province. To date, NIO has built a total of 9,003 stations, providing over 200 million charging and swapping services. NIO ranks first in the industry for the scale of both its swap stations and charging piles.
Image source: NIO
William Li, NIO's founder and chairman, stated that the company will not pursue profitability for individual stations in the short term. Instead, it plans to maintain aggressive investment to accelerate network expansion.
As charging technology evolves rapidly, NIO's battery-swap strategy is entering a critical window. The company plans to construct over 1,000 new stations in 2026, bringing the total past 4,600 by year-end. Mass deployment of its fifth-generation swap stations will commence in the third quarter.
Li previously outlined NIO's capital strategy for profitability: strict ROI control. Specifically, NIO is streamlining its application layer. It has firmly rejected extended-range and plug-in hybrid routes, and with the ES9 already in place, it will not develop a standalone MPV. However, the company is doubling down on underlying R&D—specifically chips and operating systems—as well as energy infrastructure, pledging to add 1,000 new swap stations within the year.
NIO has led or participated in revising over 50 national, industry, and group standards for battery swapping, alongside four IEC standards. It continues to promote the construction of a standard system for the battery swap industry, utilizing standardization to drive regulated development and technological innovation. As of June 10, NIO had filed for over 1,650 global battery swap patents.
Recently, the Singapore electric vehicle charging and swapping standard "Singapore Standard SS 722"—which NIO helped research and formulate—was officially released.
As a core leader in updating Singapore's swap technology standards, NIO played a pivotal role in multiple areas. The release of this standard marks progress for battery swapping at the international standardization level. The technological innovation and operational practices accumulated by Chinese firms like NIO are contributing more experience to the development of the global smart electric vehicle industry.
