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.
While most of the focus is on the need to roll out thousands of DC fast chargers every year, along with home and kerbside charging facilities, one company has been using a solution that many doubted would take off.Ā
Nio, a Chinese start-up that makes premium and luxury EVs that has been focusing on its battery-swapping technology, has reached a new major milestone, with a whopping 120,000,000 battery swaps having officially been completed.
The companyās CEO and founder, William Li, took to X to share the milestone: āHappy to share that at 08:09:16 (UTC+8) on August 7, 2026, NIO surpassed 120,000,000 battery swaps!šā
At the same time, Nio has deployed its first fifth generation power swap stations, with Li sharing: āI’m on my way to Quanzhou for the launch of our 4,000th Power Swap Station and the rollout of our first 5th-generation Power Swap Stations.ā
The latest generation stations also allow the brandās smallest, more affordable, Firefly EVs to swap, with swap times of under 3 minutes.
This comes less than six months after the company reached 100 million battery swaps across its 4,000 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 a few opening 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.
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 EV models on a road trip.
Itās also worth noting that battery swapping can help lower the initial purchase price of the car using Battery as a Service (BaaS). This arrangement allows owners to buy the car at a lower price while renting the battery through Nioās swap network.
In Australia, Nio did have plans to launch its Firefly-branded product in 2026. More details are expected from the brand in the coming months.
Last year, Firefly did see its approval for sale in Australia but no further sightings have been made locally.
Technically, the Firefly does offer battery swapping, but we have not seen any passenger-vehicle swapping infrastructure in Australia to date.
Having said that, all cars with battery swap tech can be charged too, so that’s probably a good solution for the Australian market to kick things off.
Battery swapping is not just a proof of concept, as seen by the 120 million swaps milestone, itās being done today at scale, with thousands of swaps done daily.
In recent years, CATL, the world’s biggest battery maker is rolling out swap stations in China and soon in international market too.
With brands like Nio and CATL adopting these technologies and expanding into international markets, the move to electric vehicles becomes more compelling, reducing excuses to delay the transition.
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