Li Bin, the lone brave NIO, has been doing this for five years!

Nio’s courage and pride in persisting in battery replacement for 5 years.

Text/Niu Li

Produced by/Car Traveler Niu Girl

Sorry, I still used the word "lonely and brave".

Although Eason's "The Lonely Warrior" has become too popular, this word is still the most accurate to describe NIO, which started the battery swap business 5 years ago.

As of March 31, 2023, NIO has deployed 1,339 power swap stations around the world, including 13 in overseas markets such as Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

In addition, there are 1,285 supercharging stations (7 overseas) and 6,467 supercharging piles (22 overseas).

On May 20, 2018, NIO’s first power swap station was completed in Shenzhen Nanshan Science and Technology Park;

On April 15, 2021, NIO’s first second-generation power swap station was opened in Beijing Sinopec Chaoying Gas Station was officially opened;

On March 28, 2023, NIO’s first third-generation power swap station was completed at the Shangri-La Hotel in Haikou.

In 5 years, the battery replacement business has gone from 0 to 1. NIO is a "lonely brave" qualified in the electric vehicle industry.

The outside world’s view of NIO’s battery swapping business ranges from doubt to envy, and there is quite a sense of “it used to be looked down upon but now it is out of reach”.

Recently, in a speech at a forum, Li Bin, the founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, shared the latest progress and achievements of NIO’s battery swap business with the entire industry, and proudly announced: in 2023 It is necessary to add 1,000 battery swap stations.

Li Bin’s pride has enough capital.

In the past two years, more and more local governments such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu have introduced incentives and reward policies for battery swapping. Battery swapping stations and charging stations have become new infrastructure in the new energy era. important component.

Nio has already taken the lead.

The three-year mask era is over, and everything will be renewed in 2023.

In fact, at the end of last year, facing a year full of unknowns and uncertainties in 2023, Weilai carefully planned the goal of building 400 new power swap stations.

But obviously, NIO is full of energy at the beginning of 2023.

What is even more exciting is that of the 1,000 new power swap stations, 90% are third-generation power swap stations with higher efficiency.

It is foreseeable that the increasingly perfect battery swap station layout network will be the strongest trump card and brand moat that distinguishes Weilai from other new energy brands in the future.

01

Third generation: faster and smarter

Comprehensive improvement in experience and efficiency

On March 28, in Haikou At the inauguration ceremony of Shangri-La's third-generation power swap station, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, and Shen Fei, senior vice president of NIO Energy, personally live-streamed the service efficiency and service capabilities of the third-generation power swap station for users. improvement.

Shen Fei introduced that the third-generation battery replacement station has stronger service capabilities, with the number of battery positions increased to 21, and the number of daily services can reach 408 times, which is 30% higher than the second-generation station. At the same time, the third-generation station adopts a new three-station collaborative operation mechanism, which can shorten the battery replacement time by 20%. It only takes about 4 minutes for users to complete a battery replacement service at the third-generation station, which is even longer than entering a gas station to refuel. quick.

Considering the huge losses in Weilai’s financial report, Shen Fei added that in fact, through “design cost reduction”, the construction cost of the third-generation station is even lower than that of the second-generation station.

At the same time, the third-generation station is more adaptable and will definitely be integrated and adaptable to all models of Alpine, NIO’s second brand.

In addition, the third-generation power swap station will also be equipped with 2 LiDARs and 2 NVIDIA Orin preparation.

Shen Fei revealed that Weilai will have access to and pilot operations of fully automatic unattended power swapping stations this year, which will greatly reduce operating costs.

So far, NIO has obtained more than 1,400 authorized patents and published patent applications in the field of battery swapping.

Shen Fei said that of the 1,000 battery swap stations expected to be added this year, 600 will be located in cities, mainly in second- and third-tier cities and lower-tier markets; the other 400 will be located on highways to speed up implementation. By 2025, the power exchange network layout of highways in nineteen large urban agglomerations will be nine horizontal and nine vertical.

On NIO's NIO Power energy map, increasingly dense energy layout points form the courage and pride of NIO.

02

In the 2-hour communication meeting, Shen Fei mentioned “users” 110 times

“Where NIO users are, battery swap stations will be built. ”

When mentioning the brand Weilai, there are two words that come to mind first: user and battery replacement.

At the communication and sharing meeting about the third-generation power swap station, I noticed that Shen Fei said the word "user" very frequently, so I simply made statistics based on the communication shorthand. In this meeting of about 2 During the hour-long communication meeting, he mentioned users 110 times in a row. It can be said that he used users as a "mantra" on his lips.

Talking about the goal of building 1,000 power swap stations this year, Shen Fei said:

“The challenge of building 1,000 power stations a year is still very big, and I am not 100% confident, but I and the entire energy team will try our best to do this. Since the birth of NIO Power, my team has not disappointed users, and it will not disappoint users this year. "

These 1,000 seats will be replaced. How and where will the power station be laid out?

The iron law followed by the energy teams of NIO and Shen Fei is - "Where NIO users are, power swap stations will be built."

Not long ago, NIO Organized a "User Wish List" event and received nearly 140,000 wish lists for battery swap station locations.

“We hope that users will continue to tell us where your wishes are and where there is any inconvenience,” Shen Fei said. My wish cannot be fulfilled 100%, but I will try my best to satisfy it.

In addition to user wish lists, NIO also has its own Athena intelligent system to help select the address of the battery replacement station. In the end, the user's wish list will be compared with the address recommended by the system, and each other will be referenced to assist, and the final decision will be made on where to build the battery swap station.

“Assuming that the number of users increases steadily and we do not build new power swap stations this year, each power swap station can achieve breakeven by receiving 50-60 orders.” Shen Fei revealed that as the As the number of users increases, the efficiency of battery swap stations gradually increases, and the input-output ratio of battery swap stations also gradually increases.

Many experts made wrong predictions about traveling during the Spring Festival in 2023. They did not expect that the battery replacement during the Spring Festival would be so "intense".

On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, Shen Fei held a meeting with regional general managers across the country. After working during the Spring Festival, he discussed with more internal colleagues and decided to build more power swap stations this year.

“Nio’s decision-making is very simple. It is to think based on the interests of users and then see whether the internal systematization capabilities can be achieved. If users have this demand and our capabilities are still lacking, we will work harder. If you already have the ability to meet it, then do it immediately.”

Shen Fei said that whether it is building a power station or a charging pile, NIO’s thinking logic is not based on that. Is there any local subsidy? Is the subsidy high? But just because my users want to go there, I will build there.

”

Of course, these facilities will be opened to non-NIO brands, but regardless of price or order, NIO users will be given priority. During peak periods, other brand users will be asked to come as little as possible to ensure that NIO users Users give priority to charging.

“Any user, no matter where you are, is a user of NIO, and I will do our best to serve him well. I don’t care whether it is in Pudong or Chongming, Shanghai, or in a county or town in Sichuan, Hunan, or Hubei, I will lay it out. Of course, in this process, I will try my best to hope that the marginal benefit of each website is larger and can serve more users. ”

Shen Fei explained Weilai’s user service concept in this way.

03

The real moat

Many people would say that users It is Weilai's moat.

But I think this statement is not accurate.

There are passionate users

In electric vehicles. In the current era of rapid development and facing the future, more and more complete battery swap station systems are the real moat for the NIO brand.

According to incomplete statistics, in the past two years, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, Guangxi, Yunnan, Sichuan and other provinces and cities have successively introduced policies to encourage, incentivize and reward battery exchange.

For example, in August last year, the Beijing Urban Management Committee issued the "14th". "Beijing New Energy Vehicle Charging and Swapping Facilities Development Plan during the Five-Year Plan Period", the plan is clear, promotes the construction of battery swapping stations, and encourages the development of vehicle-battery separation models.

In January last year, Shanghai issued "About the City's Further Development of Charging and Swapping Facilities" "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Construction of Charging and Swapping Infrastructure", the opinions proposed to explore the most exclusive model of battery swapping services in advantageous areas.

In September of the same year, 10 departments including the Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission issued "Shanghai Encourages Electricity. "Measures for Supporting the Development of Automobile Charging and Swapping Facilities", which states that the demonstration construction of high-level battery swapping stations will be supported.

In March last year, the official website of Guangzhou Municipal Development and Reform Commission released the "14th Guidelines for the Innovative Development of Intelligent and New Energy Vehicles in Guangzhou". "Five" Plan", the plan proposes to accelerate the construction of battery swap infrastructure service network, and the number of battery swap stations will reach 400 by 2025.

In June last year, the Guangdong Provincial Energy Bureau issued the "Guangdong Province Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure "Development of the "14th Five-Year Plan"", the plan proposes to encourage the rational construction of battery swap stations in highway service areas to improve energy replenishment efficiency; to encourage qualified cities to carry out the application of battery swap models based on actual needs.

In September last year, the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guangzhou Three-Year Action Plan to Accelerate the Construction of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure (2022-2024)", proposing that about 120 battery swap stations should be built during 2022-2024.

Last year, the Guangxi government issued the "Implementation Rules for the Three-Year Action Financial Subsidy for the Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region", which proposed a one-time construction subsidy based on the rated charging power of the charging module of the battery swapping equipment. Subsidy, the subsidy standard is 1,500 yuan/kilowatt, and the upper limit of the subsidy for a single site is 400,000 yuan.

...

Shen Fei said that one day during the 2023 Spring Festival holiday, Weilai exchanged electricity. The number of battery swaps in the system in a single day is more than 62,000 times, which is the peak so far. It has recently stabilized at about 46,000 times per day. In early April, the total number of power swaps exceeded 20 million.

Nio car owners. More than 50% of the power added comes from battery replacement. Comparing the charging capacity and battery replacement, the proportion of battery replacement is constantly increasing, and the proportion of charging power is constantly decreasing. 80% of users have done battery replacement. experience.

NIO has already felt the advantages brought by battery swapping - more and more users who cannot install home charging stations at home have purchased NIO's products.

Concerning power exchange, another very valuable and meaningful direction is to participate in grid regulation interaction.

The current power swap station is single-purpose, but in the future it can fully participate in the frequency regulation and services of the power grid and the stability of the power grid, becoming a two-way interactive model.

According to the instructions of the power grid, the speed and quantity of power collection and return are adjusted according to different periods and locations. Make electric vehicle travel more power-saving, money-saving, and energy-saving.

This is not a fantasy. From an academic perspective, this issue has been studied clearly. Shen Fei said that NIO has actually increased its cooperation with the power grid last year.

Last year in Zhejiang, Weilai has connected all 72 power swap stations to the dispatching of the power grid through virtual power plants to observe how it plays a regulatory role.

Power swap stations deployed in Europe this year will also begin such attempts.

In Shen Fei’s view, the ultimate solution for powering up is an integrated charging and swapping station.

Currently, charging piles and power swap stations are operated separately, but perhaps NIO’s next-generation power swap station model will be upgraded to an integrated charging and swap station, and at the same time, together with photovoltaic power collection and power storage, it will become a photovoltaic storage system. All-in-one charging and swapping station.

Shen Fei introduced that the service capacity of the integrated charging and swapping station will be 1.6 to 2 times that of an ultra-fast charging station with the same power capacity, or even higher.

“What is NIO’s philosophy? Flexible combination of charging and swapping to adapt to different scenarios.” Shen Fei added.

A single charge/swap by a single user, the efficiency of a single station, battery usage efficiency and user experience, and interaction with the power grid—from these four dimensions, the battery, charging and swapping network, and electricity The systems are combined together to create a systematic solution, which is not a one-dimensional competition with a single 800V ultra-fast charging pile. Just like what is told in the science fiction novel "The Three-Body Problem".

“Let’s do this together to make the network more open and open, so that users can have a better user experience. In the competition between trams and oil trucks, the final winner must be the trams.”

Li Bin has also said many times on different occasions that NIO’s battery replacement network and batteries are open to the entire industry.

In NIO’s charging network, 80% of non-NIO brand electric vehicles are already charging.

On different occasions, Li Bin also spared no effort to call on his colleagues to build more infrastructure.

The cow girl said:

If you don’t understand it, you can laugh at a new thing as much as you want. The more you understand, the more careful you are about your words. In the past, I was also one of the people who laughed at NIO’s collapse and Li Bin’s worst misfortune.

But now, I am in awe of this company.

This company has already practiced the "long-termism" that many companies talk about. After experiencing the experience of being on the verge of bankruptcy, what Li Bin and his Weilai gained is more leisurely. They built power replacement stations one by one, installed charging piles one by one, and entered the markets of developed countries one by one to participate in the strong market. compete.

This is another level of courage and pride for NIO.

This article is from Summer, the author of Yichehao. The copyright belongs to the author. Please contact the author for any form of reprinting. The content only represents the author's opinion and has nothing to do with Bitauto