NIO Opens Battery Swapping to Firefly and Launches 5th-Generation Swapping Stations

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NIO has basically stood alone in its long-term commitment to EV battery swapping technology and infrastructure. Now, its youngest sub-brand, Firefly, is getting access to these battery swapping stations. Additionally, the company is starting to roll out its new, 5th-generation battery swapping stations.

Firefly, for those who haven’t followed along that closely, is a small-car brand underneath NIO’s wings. The cars are definitely cool and snazzy and premium-leaning cars, but they are much smaller and cheaper than NIO or ONVO vehicles. One might think they are therefore not the best fit for battery swapping, but people who own small cars are probably more likely to live in apartments and not have dedicated parking spaces where they can charge, so battery swapping might be the perfect solution for many of them.

As far as the new 5th-gen battery swapping stations, these are initially being rolled out in 7 cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Suzhou, Hefei, Chengdu, and Quanzhou. Incidentally (or maybe it was planned this way for a while), the first 5th-gen station was also NIO’s 4,000th battery swapping station overall. It was installed at th Qiaoxiang Gymnasium in Quanzhou. These 5th-gen stations are more flexible and are the first that can accommodate/service every single NIO, ONVO, and Firefly model.

As of Friday morning, NIO had completed 120 million battery swaps. Yes, 120 million. The company had reached 100 million swaps on February 6, showing a remarkable increase in pace since the first battery swap in 2018. “It has 1,049 swap stations along highways, linking nine north-south and 11 east-west corridors as well as 16 major city clusters, and covering more than 550 cities,” CnEVPost shares. “In cities, 80.1% of users have at least one swap station within three kilometers of their home or workplace.”