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Nio is holding a year-end media briefing in Shanghai, and this article records key takeaways from the event.
(Image credit: CnEVPost)
Nio (NYSE: NIO) is holding a year-end media briefing in Shanghai, and this article aims to record the key points from the event.
What follows are responses from Nio’s management — primarily its founder, chairman and CEO William Li — to the media, from local media reports and from Weibo automotive bloggers.
The following content will continue to be updated.
Battery swap services are similar to cloud services, though even building 100,000 battery swap stations wouldn’t cost as much as Amazon and Google building cloud service networks.
All car companies can plug into Nio’s battery swap system, and they can do so by retrofitting their existing models for as little as RMB 10 million to RMB 20 million.
Nio just signed a new battery swap alliance agreement this morning.
The annual amortization and depreciation cost for a battery swap station is about RMB 300,000 to RMB 400,000, and a station can last about 8 years.
The battery swap business is not a burden for Nio, but a moat. The battery swap business is profitable if the average number of orders per station is 60 per day, and the number is already at about 80 in Shanghai.
Battery swap stations are distributed, with a large network that allows for flexible operations.
Nio will have dedicated stations and public stations, similar to private and public clouds.
Nio has taken back full ownership of Nio Power in 2021, and the business is now its wholly owned subsidiary, but is open to investment from outside investors.
Other car companies looking to launch models that support battery swap will be assisted by Nio to see which of their existing models are suitable for retrofitting.
Nio will have three battery packs to share with partners, entry, mid-end and high-end.
Some companies that specialize in battery assets partner with us, they build battery swap stations and access our network, and we operate the stations. This is similar to Tencent Cloud and Ali Cloud, who access third-party server rooms.
Nio has positioned itself as a premium brand, not a luxury brand. You can only be called a premium brand if you are leading in technology.
Nio has already made a project for an MPV model, but the launch won’t be that fast.
Overall, Nio vehicles will move up in price and it will not launch a cheaper car than ET5.
Nio battery swap alliance has signed up 1 new automaker, says William Li
