After Norway, the Chinese manufacturer Nio arrives in Germany and has just delivered its very first battery exchange station there. This is the first to have been manufactured in Europe.
Founded in China in 2014, the young Nio brand has strong ambitions and now wishes to establish itself in Europe. The manufacturer is already present in Norway with its battery exchange stations and its ES8 electric SUV. An innovative system, which allows you to drop off your empty battery and retrieve a new one for your car in just a few minutes and in a fully automated way. For the time being, only Norway was equipped with it in Europe, but now that is changing.
Delivery to Germany
Indeed, as reported by the media Car News China, the manufacturer has just delivered its first battery exchange station in Germany. A first, while other countries will also soon be equipped by the end of the year, such as the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. Nio should also make his arrival in France, but no date has yet been communicated.
As explained InsideEVs, this station has 14 slots, 13 of which contain a battery ready to be installed as well as one that remains empty. This is then used to accommodate the empty battery from the car. Depending on the brand, each station would be able to perform approximately 312 swaps per day, i.e. an average duration of 4.6 minutes per operation.
At the beginning of the year, Nio has already celebrated its 10 million “swaps”, but it does not intend to stop there. According Car News China, the brand is currently developing a third generation of battery swapping stations. This will be tested between the end of the year and the beginning of 2023. If few details have been revealed, this new version would be even faster. It would allow the firm to achieve its goal of offering 4,000 infrastructures worldwide by 2025.
A great first
But if this battery exchange station is so much talked about, it is also because it is the very first to come out of the European factory in Nio, located in Hungary. Covering an area of 10,000 square meters, it is the first operational production center outside of China. This is also used for research and development for Europe. The brand indeed intends to invade the Old Continent, since it should notably market different cars there: the ES7, ET5 and ET7.
But that’s not all. Indeed, Nio is also working on the development of fast charging stations and revealed some information on this subject last July. These will offer 500 kW of power for 650A and should be operational by the end of the year., Europe and China. What get closer to 10 minutes to recharge its battery, as promised by the Chinese giant CATL.
If the promise were kept, the Chinese brand would then put a real beating to Tesla, which plans to launch a new generation of V4 Superchargers peaking at 350 kW. For now, it is in Spain that you have to go to find the most powerful terminals in Europe, supplied by Circontrol and displaying a power of 400 kW.
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