NIO has formulated an ambitious plan for the construction of charging and swapping stations, and in order to achieve this grand goal, it has to start seeking more partner support.
On August 20th, NIO announced its latest layout plan for charging stations and battery swapping stations. By June 30, 2025, NIO's charging services must cover all county-level administrative regions across the country; Exchange stations cover over 1200 county-level administrative regions. By the end of next year, NIO battery swapping stations will cover more than 2300 county-level administrative regions across the country, and gradually cover over 2800 county-level administrative regions starting from 2026.
This layout plan is referred to by NIO as the 'County to County Connection'. Its most intuitive benefit is that it can help NIO penetrate into the previously difficult to reach county-level consumer groups. This start-up electric vehicle company focuses on the high-end new energy vehicle market, with store layouts concentrated in first and second tier cities.
A NIO insider revealed to Interface News that internal research has found that in places where there are no NIO stores, having a NIO battery swapping station can also serve the same purpose as a store, attracting new users' interest in purchasing cars. This also saves store building costs to some extent.
But achieving such a large-scale infrastructure construction in a short period of time is not an easy task. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, as of the end of 2023, there are a total of 2844 county-level administrative regions in China. Since the first battery swapping station was established in May 2018, NIO has built and laid out 2480 battery swapping stations in 6 years, covering more than 300 prefecture level cities across the country.
On the other hand, the construction cost of a single battery swapping station is not low. According to public reports, the single station cost of NIO's first replacement power station is 3 million yuan. After years of iterative upgrades, the construction cost of the third substitution power station still needs to be around 1.5 million yuan.
The NIO battery swapping station has not yet achieved a break even point, which will help NIO Energy generate positive cash flow and support significant capital expenditures in the future. And NIO's first quarter financial report data shows that in the first three months of this year, NIO's net loss reached 5.185 billion yuan.
On the day of announcing the new round of charging and swapping layout plan to alleviate construction pressure, NIO held an "investment promotion meeting" and released the plan for charging partners. Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of NIO, stated that NIO Energy is open to the whole society to cooperate in the construction of charging and swapping stations, becoming an open platform for the construction of new energy vehicle infrastructure.
NIO offers three cooperation models to its partners, including charging station franchise model, fixed income model for charging and swapping stations, and guaranteed profit sharing model for charging and swapping stations. Among them, the charging station franchise model is responsible for the site, power, and construction by partners, while NIO Energy provides equipment, platforms, operations, and maintenance. The other two models only require partners to provide funds, and the returns may vary slightly depending on the risk they bear.
Qin Lihong believes that NIO's charging and swapping stations have a large number of users, a large investment in technology, strong manufacturing capabilities, and can achieve full coverage of 24-hour operation and maintenance. The only risk (of investment) is the bankruptcy of NIO
A market analyst interviewed by Interface News pointed out that new energy vehicle brands entering the knockout stage need to seek ecological partners from multiple aspects, share operational risks and research and development costs, and help themselves reduce car manufacturing costs, especially in infrastructure construction.
To achieve higher profits with its partners, NIO needs to explore more brands and incorporate them into its own charging and swapping system. As of now, NIO has reached charging strategic partnerships with 20 car brands and battery swapping strategic partnerships with 7 car companies. Qin Lihong said that the cooperation on battery swapping is progressing smoothly.
This cooperation plan is also beneficial for NIO Energy's subsequent independent financing. On May 31st, NIO Energy received a strategic investment of 1.5 billion yuan from institutions such as Wuhan Guangchuang Fund. After completing its first financing, NIO still holds around 90% of NIO Energy's shares. NIO CEO Li Bin stated that NIO Energy will continue to open up investment cooperation to investors and automotive companies in the future.