Lotus partners with Nio for battery swapping

Nio has won Lotus as another partner for its battery swapping business. Both companies have agreed on a comprehensive strategic cooperation in connection with swapping and charging electric car batteries.

The cooperation agreement was signed at Auto China in Beijing. “According to the agreement, the two companies will carry out comprehensive and in-depth strategic cooperation in areas related to charging and swapping.” According to Nio, that includes battery standards and charging and exchange technologies.

Nio began looking for partners for its previously exclusive battery exchange stations at the end of last year – Changan was the first company to sign an agreement with Nio. In January, partnerships with JAC and Chery followed. So far, however, no vehicles from other manufacturers on the market utilise Nio technology.

It is not surprising that Lotus now also wants to use Nio’s interchangeable batteries. For one thing, parent company Geely has partnered with Nio on battery swapping since November 2023. Furthermore, Lotus builds expensive and high-quality EVs with correspondingly large batteries for a solvent clientele, who are probably willing to pay for the service of a quick battery change. As with the other manufacturers, however, Lotus has yet to announce specific models that will support battery replacement at Nio.

Nio now has 2,404 battery swapping stations in China. According to the company, 790 of these are located along 13 motorways that connect eleven city clusters. In addition, Nio operates almost 22,000 charging points at 3,800 locations that have been open to other brands for some time.

“Cooperation is always the best option. NIO has always been open to cooperation in charging and swapping technologies as well as infrastructure network deployment”, says William Li, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Nio. “We would like to work together with Lotus to push forward the development of the premium smart electric vehicle market, make joint efforts in technological innovation and standard unification for charging and swapping, push for a larger-scale, standardized and unified energy infrastructure network, so as to deliver efficient and friendly recharging service experiences to users.”

Qingfeng Feng, CEO of Group Lotus, added: “Our cooperation with NIO to share with each other the charging and swapping resources will allow our users to experience the track genes and ultimate performance of Lotus while enjoying friendly services of NIO’s charging and swapping network across China.”

nio.com