EV adoption has taken off in many parts of the world with 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, there is another company using a solution that many said would never work. Nio, a Chinese start-up, has been focusing on its battery swap technologies.
Now, the companyās thousands of swap stations have reached a new milestone, with a whopping 90,000,000 battery swaps having officially been completed.
The companyās CEO and founder, William Li, took to X to share the milestone: āThrilled to share that we just hit the 90,000,000th battery swap at 22:53:25 on October 26, 2025.ā
In the same post, Li shared that the last 10 million battery swaps that took the figure from 80 million swaps to 90 million took just 100 days. The first 10 million swaps took over 4 years, or 1,506 days. This would make the latest milestone 15 times faster than the first round.
According to data from Nio, the company had 2,432 stations as of June 2024, and it increased that number to 3,201 battery swap stations as of February 28 2025.
Since then, the company has hit several milestones, including rolling out over 1,000 battery swap stations along highways in China.
In recent years, Nio has taken its battery swap technology to other markets, including those in Europe.
In 2022, Nio started opening swapping stations in Europe, with Norway seeing a few battery swap stations come online.Ā
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, which is much faster than charging many EV models on a road trip.
From a local perspective, Nio is planning on launching in the Australian market with its Firefly-branded product. Technically, it does offer battery swapping, but we have yet to see any passenger vehicle swapping infrastructure.
With Firefly seeing its approval for sale in Australia, itās likely that these cars will be charged instead of swapping when they hit the market over the coming months.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.
Battery swapping isnāt just a proof of concept, and as seen with the 90 million swaps milestone, itās done today and at scale. With brands like Nio using these technologies and expanding into international markets, it can only be good for those looking to make the switch.
See also:Ā Rio Tinto launches battery swap electric truck trial fleet at giant copper mine
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.