NIO opened its first third-generation battery swap station on Hainan Island in China. In December 2021, NIO announced the third-generation battery swap station at the 2022 NIO Day. Compared with the second-generation battery swap station, the third-generation battery swap station adopts a brand new three-position collaborative swap mode, minimizing the battery flow path, shortening the swap time by 20%, and increasing the service capacity by 30%. It is reported that the NIO third-generation battery swap station will be put into actual use in early April.
The third-generation battery swap station is equipped with a 500 kW ultra-fast charging pile with a single peak power of 500 kW and a maximum current of 660 A. With a 100 kWh battery pack, the ES7 can recharge about 400 km of CLTC cruising range in 20 minutes. The third-generation battery swap station also uses a self-developed liquid-cooled charging gun cable, which can be operated easily with one hand and reduces weight by more than half.
The NIO third-generation battery swap station adopts a new three-position collaborative operation mechanism, which reduces the battery swap time by 20%. The battery compartment has been increased to 21, and the daily service frequency can reach 408 times, an increase of 30% compared to the second-generation station. Equipped with two laser radars and two NVIDIA Orin X chips, the single station computing power reaches 508 TOPS.
The third-generation battery swap station also adopts the world’s first NIO-developed HPC bidirectional high-power liquid-cooled power module, with a maximum efficiency of 98% and a charging and discharging power of 62.5 kW. This greatly improves the charging and discharging efficiency of batteries in the swap station.
Founder, Chairman, and CEO of NIO, Li Bin, previously announced that the goal for constructing battery swapping stations in 2023 has been increased from the original plan of adding 400 stations to adding 1000 stations. By 2023, NIO will have built over 2300 battery swapping stations, including around 600 stations in urban areas that will focus on cities and counties with a certain user base but no existing battery swapping stations, and approximately 400 high-speed swapping stations that will accelerate the layout of the high-speed swapping network in the 9 vertical and 9 horizontal city clusters.
