On June 24th, NIO announced that Wuhan NIO Energy Co., Ltd. and FAW Hongqi Automobile Sales Co., Ltd. have officially reached a charging network interconnection cooperation. This is the first landing project of NIO and China FAW after signing a strategic cooperation framework agreement on May 21st.
It is reported that FAW Hongqi will fully connect to the NIO charging network. Starting from June 24th, FAW Hongqi users can use the Hongqi Zhilian App to view real-time information such as the location, price, status, and usage of NIO charging stations nationwide, and quickly complete operations such as scanning, charging, and payment.
At present, NIO has built a relatively large charging and swapping network in China. As of June 24th, NIO has built 2435 battery swapping stations and 22705 charging stations nationwide. Based on this energy replenishment system, in the past six months, multiple automotive brands have reached cooperation with NIO in terms of charging and swapping.
Before Hongqi, brands such as Changan, Geely, SAIC General Motors, Xiaopeng, Jiyue, Lotus, and Zhiji had already achieved charging interconnection with NIO. In terms of battery swapping, NIO has established partnerships with seven Chinese car companies including FAW, Changan, Geely, and GAC for battery swapping.
A management representative from the planning department of a domestic car company told reporters that NIO has already built a relatively large-scale charging and swapping system. Collaborating with NIO can reduce the cost of duplicate construction of the energy supplement system, which is an important reason for attracting the above-mentioned car companies to cooperate with NIO.
In order to improve the utilization rate of charging stations and further solve the problem of difficult profitability of charging stations, the interconnection of charging facilities has become a trend.
At the policy level, in May last year, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration issued implementation opinions on accelerating the construction of charging infrastructure and better supporting the rural revitalization of new energy vehicles. Among them, under the terms of improving the experience of charging infrastructure operation and maintenance services, the above opinions focus on promoting the interconnection of public charging and swapping network operator platforms.
Tesla, which has invested heavily in charging networks, has long been planning to allow other car brands to connect and open up its own charging networks to other car companies. Ford and General Motors have decided to connect to Tesla's charging standards, and Tesla CEO Musk has also invited Toyota to join Tesla's charging network through public channels.
Previously, Li Bin, Chairman and CEO of NIO, stated at last September's financial report that NIO's charging system had achieved a break even point. However, there are currently no specific projects for NIO's cooperation in the field of battery swapping, and Changan, Geely, and others have not yet launched products that are compatible with NIO's battery swapping system. With the continuous expansion of the battery swapping network, NIO's battery swapping business still has a long way to go before it can break even.
However, recently, NIO has started to increase the construction of shared battery swapping networks. On June 13th, the first batch of fourth generation battery swapping stations from NIO were officially launched, which will support independent battery swapping for multiple brands and models, and provide battery swapping services for NIO, Ledo, and battery swapping strategic partner users.