An electrical car is seen at NIO battery swap station on March 9, 2025 in Yantai, Shandong Province of China.
Tang Ke/VCG through Getty Photos/Visible China Group
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Tang Ke/VCG through Getty Photos/Visible China Group
BEIJING – Take a highway journey in an electrical automobile, and the juicing up routine. You pull off the freeway, park at a charging station, plug within the automobile … and wait. When you’re fortunate, it is about half an hour. Typically, it is longer.
In China, one firm can get you again on the highway in minutes. I had the chance to see how, with Jason Wu, an government at NIO Energy, an EV maker.
Just a few weeks in the past, I sat in a roomy SUV, whereas Wu, within the driver’s seat, spoke to the car. “Hi Nomi.”
“I’m here,” the automobile responds in a cute, child-like voice. Wu asks the automobile to provoke a battery swap, and the automobile takes over.
We drive right into a small construction that appears like a one automobile storage with out back and front partitions. The automobile instructs Wu to take his foot off the brake, take away his palms from the steering wheel and to not open the doorways.
“If you feel nervous, I’m here,” it says. Then, it mechanically backs into the automobile port.
The corporate acknowledges that lengthy charging occasions are conserving folks from shopping for EVs
“This is fully-automated battery swapping,” Wu says.
No extra ready to cost up. The automobile is about to get a recent battery.
NIO has acknowledged that lengthy charging occasions are one of many foremost causes conserving folks from shopping for EVs – not solely in China, however all around the world.
The corporate has put in almost 4,000 battery swap stations like this all over the world, most in China.
NIO EVs are fashionable in China, however competitors is fierce. The corporate has roughly 4% market share in autos which might be primarily electrical. Its battery swapping remains to be one thing of a novelty.
Nevertheless it’s a sexy answer in a rustic the place many drivers dwell in flats that do not all the time have charging ports.
“On February 6, 2026, our total battery swapping network had provided 100 million swaps,” mentioned Wu. That is for the reason that first swap station opened in Beijing eight years in the past. “This fully demonstrates that battery swapping, as a power replenishment method, has already become very mainstream.”
China’s highways have 1,000 of those NIO swapping stations
NIO says it is saved drivers greater than 83 million hours. Different firms are attempting it, together with CATL, the world’s largest battery maker. Within the U.S., some see it as a helpful potential answer for electrical vans, which have lengthy charging occasions.
Wu extolls battery swapping as handy, quick and secure. And he says it is good for the well being of the batteries. There’s additionally no must get out and fuss with cables or fuel pumps. Nio house owners have the choice of shopping for or renting the battery of their automobile, and so they can cost the conventional method, too.
For highway trippers, NIO has put over 1,000 swapping stations alongside China’s highways.
Again on the battery altering station, the automobile stops within the port. It lifts up a tiny bit, and jostles round, adopted by a muffled, methodic clanking sound after which, silence. The grey steel ground beneath the car opens, and a machine rises to the undercarriage.
The automobile’s complete battery pack, which weighs about 1,100 kilos, or about as a lot as a grand piano, is unbolted and whisked away, underground. It goes right into a closed room on the aspect of the swapping station the place it’s plugged in to cost for a future person.
Underneath the automobile, there are a number of clicks and clanks as a recent battery is lifted into place and bolted securely to the car. The system runs some diagnostic checks. And that is it.
“OK, you can see. Green light,” Wu says. “The battery swap is done.”
A display screen on the swapping station exhibits how lengthy the entire course of took: Three minutes and eight seconds … or about the identical time it’d take to gas up at a fuel station.
–Jasmine Ling contributed to this story.
