The company also has 341 supercharging stations with 2,176 supercharging piles, 515 destination charging stations with 2,878 piles and access to more than 400,000+ third-party charging piles.
The Chinese Lunar New Year holiday is a peak travel time for the public, and NIO wants to significantly expand its battery swap station coverage along highways before then to make it easier for its customers to travel by car.
The electric vehicle company announced Tuesday that it will have a battery swap network covering eight major highways and four densely populated metropolitan areas by the Chinese New Year in 2022.
The next Chinese New Year will come on February 1, 2022, and no official schedule has been released, but the holiday is usually seven days.
The holiday is typically a time for people working in major cities to return to their hometowns and will also see one of the world's largest population migrations, although it has waned in size in recent years due to Covid-19 concerns.
According to NIO's plan, the company hopes to complete a battery swap network along five north-south highways and three east-west highways by then.
The five north-south highways are G1 Beijing-Harbin Expressway, G2 Beijing-Shanghai Expressway, G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway, G5 Beijing-Kunming Expressway, and G15 Shenyang-Haikou Expressway.
The three east-west highways are the G30 Lianyungang-Horgos Expressway, the G50 Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway, and the G60 Shanghai-Kunming Expressway.
The four metropolitan areas the company hopes to cover are Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and Chengdu-Chongqing.
William Li, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, said Tuesday that the company's number of battery swap stations covering the highway now stands at 99 and will increase to 169 by the Chinese New Year.
Notably, NIO has previously built battery swap networks covering the G2 Beijing-Shanghai Expressway and the G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway.
On September 20, the company announced the completion of its battery swap network covering the G1 Beijing-Harbin Expressway, making it the third fully connected expressway battery swap network.
The G1 Beijing-Harbin Expressway is 1,229 kilometers long, and NIO has provided 10 battery swap stations along its route, one every 120 kilometers on average.
In addition, NIO announced on September 16 that with three new battery swap stations in highway service areas in operation, it has completed its network of battery swap stations in highway service areas from Beijing to all major cities in the surrounding area.
The network consists of 12 highway battery swap stations, centered on Beijing, covering the service areas in Hebei and Tianjin on seven highways: Beijing-Chengde, Beijing-Harbin, Beijing-Lhasa, Beijing-Chongli, Beijing-Shanghai, Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau, and Beijing-Qinhuangdao.
According to CnEVPost database, as of September 21, NIO had 484 battery swap stations in China.
This article was first published by Phate Zhang on CnEVPost, a website focusing on new energy vehicle news from China.