On September 6, 2026, NIO announced the latest data for its national charging and swapping network: 9,322 charging and swapping stations have been built across China, comprising 4,070 battery-swap stations and 5,252 charging stations with 30,280 charging piles, having provided more than 120 million battery-swap services in total.
Compared with the 9,210 stations reported on August 16, NIO added 112 sites in three weeks, 50 more swap stations and 365 more charging piles. On the same day, the company's 91st 'power tour' route - the Jinnan溯源 (origin-tracing) loop - was opened, spanning 1,849 km with 13 swap stations along the way, covering cities including Taiyuan, Jinzhong, Linfen, Yuncheng, Jincheng, Changzhi and Yangquan.
The fifth-generation swap station, first deployed in Quanzhou, Fujian at the beginning of August, has cut a single swap to about 1 minute 48 seconds and can serve up to 200 vehicles a day, now compatible with the NIO, Onvo and Firefly brands. NIO plans to expand its power-tour routes to 100 by year-end, with the Silk Road swap route to open in September.
Backed by 1.26 million cumulative deliveries, the network averages roughly 95 swaps per vehicle. Once mocked as too heavy and too slow to pay off, NIO's swap infrastructure is increasingly cited by rivals including CATL, BAIC and Geely as a direction worth following, turning a capital-intensive bet into a battery-asset management system competitors cannot quickly replicate.
Image: Next-generation EV charging infrastructure. Source: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).
