EV adoption has taken off in many parts of the world, including in Australia, with an increased number of fast chargers being deployed to keep up with the growth.Ā
While most of the focus is on rolling out thousands of DC fast chargers every year, and home and kerbside charging facilities, one company has been using a solution that many said would never work.Ā
Nio, a Chinese start-up, has been focusing on its battery-swapping technology and has reached a new major milestone, with a whopping 100,000,000 battery swaps having officially been completed.
The companyās CEO and founder, William Li, took to X to share the milestone: āProud to share that at 22:33:18 (UTC+8) on February 6, 2026, NIO hit 100,000,000th battery swap! Huge thanks to everyone who made this possible. Letās Power Up!ā
The video shared with the milestone showed Li with Nio users doing a countdown until the 100 million Nio power swaps had taken place.
Earlier in the week, Li also shared that the company expected to achieve a profit of above $A140 million in Q4 of 2025, its first ever quarter of profitability.
This comes less than four months after the company reached 90 million battery swaps across its over 3,700 battery swap stations across many parts of China and international markets too.
In recent years, Nio has taken its battery swap technology to other markets, including those in Europe.
According to Nio, the first 10 million swaps took over 4 years, or 1,506 days. Then, 80 million swaps to 90 million took just 100 days. This would make the latest milestone 15 times faster than the first round.
The companyās cars have also evolved in that period of time, with some of the latest models seeing battery swap times of around 3 minutes. Thatās much faster than charging many EV models on a road trip.
Itās also worth noting that battery swapping isnāt just providing additional convenience, as it can help lower the initial purchase price of the car using Battery as a Service (BaaS).Ā
This arrangement allows owners to buy the car at a lower price while renting the battery through Nioās swap network.
Nioās Onvo L60 SUV, which is a Tesla Model Y competitor, has a starting price of $A42,500. With BaaS, this is lowered to just $A30,800, saving over 25% of the initial purchase price of the car, with ongoing payments as part of the program.Ā
In Australia, Nio plans to launch its Firefly-branded product in 2026. Technically, it does offer battery swapping, but we have not seen any passenger-vehicle swapping infrastructure in the country to date.
With Firefly seeing its approval for sale in Australia as of the second half of 2025, itās likely that these cars will be charged instead of swapping when they hit the market.Ā
The Firefly could also be the first of a few models by the brand in our market, including the mid-spec Onvo brand, along with the more premium Nio brand down the track, which could be something luxury brands in Australia might need to keep their tabs on.
Battery swapping isnāt just a proof of concept; as evidenced by the 100 million swaps milestone, itās being done today at scale.Ā
With brands like Nio adopting these technologies and expanding into international markets, the move to electric vehicles becomes more compelling, reducing excuses to delay the transition.
Afterall, itās quicker than filling up at a servo.
RizĀ is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.