Nio commissions its first battery swapping station in Denmark

The Chinese electric car manufacturer Nio has commissioned its first battery exchange station in Denmark. The site is located on the E20 motorway in Slagelse, in the west of the Danish main island of Zealand, about 100 kilometres southwest of Copenhagen.

To date, Nio has opened a total of twelve battery exchange stations across Europe in five countries, namely Norway, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark. By the end of 2023, Nio plans to expand the number to 120 such stations across Europe. In China, Nio has recently increased the construction target for battery swapping stations from 400 to 1,000 new locations in 2023.

It will be some time before there is a similarly dense network of Nio battery exchange stations in Europe as in China. Nio customers are, therefore, still dependent on wired charging for their vehicles. The European charging card from Nio gives them access to 388,000 charging stations from third-party providers.

As the CN EV Post writes, Nio management recently admitted that “despite the efforts of the European team, the expansion of the company’s local infrastructure still falls short of internal expectations”. However, considering that Nio’s customers also have access to high-speed charging in Europe, they are not hit too hard by the delayed infrastructure buildup.

“What we can see is that the feedback from users on all aspects of the test drive is very good, and our team is gradually getting on track. But in general, we have to speed up the infrastructure,” said William Li, founder, chairman and CEO of the company, adding: “Our colleagues are working hard, but this is a little bit further from our original plan.” He also underlined that customer satisfaction was currently the company’s top target in the European market, with deliveries being the secondary goal.

Nio started delivering the new Nio EL7 last month after delays due to a trademark dispute with Audi. The five-seater electric SUV is positioned between the ES6 and ES8. First announced in February 2022, the electric vehicle is based on the manufacturer’s new NT2.0 platform. Nio’s established SUV models – the ES8, ES6 and the SUV coupe EC6 are still based on the first generation of the platform.

cnevpost.com, weixin.qq.com (in Chinese)