Nio‘s second brand, Onvo, announced its commitment to completing more than 300 battery-swapping stations monthly, ensuring Onvo vehicle owners have access to over 1,000 stations by the end of the year. Note that Onvo L60 only works with Nio’s fourth-generation swap stations. Therefore, this initiative will include building new fourth-generation swap stations and modifying existing third-generation stations to fit Onvo’s needs. The battery-swapping network will cover highways across nine vertical and nine horizontal routes and 19 major urban areas. This plan will provide Onvo owners with battery swapping and energy replenishment resources.
Onvo also launched the ‘Onvo battery swapping wishlist, ‘ a campaign to involve Onvo app users in its expansion plans. This campaign will run until September 3rd. During this period, each Onvo app user can select three preferred locations for new battery-swapping stations on the map. The collected data will influence future swapping station deployments.
Onvo CEO Ai Tiecheng previously announced the highly anticipated launch of the Onvo L60 will be in late September. The Onvo L60 SUV is Onvo’s first car. It is set to roll off the production line by the end of the month. Deliveries and test drives will be available on the launch event day.
The Onvo L60 series will be built on a 900V silicon carbide platform, adopting the BaaS (Battery as a Service) leasing scheme. The Nio Onvo L60, featuring a 60 kWh (or, more accurately, 61 kWh) battery pack, offers a CLTC range of either 555 km or 525 km in the single-motor configuration. In the dual-motor version, the range is either 525 km or 501 km. This range variation is attributed to the different wheel sizes available for the L60, which comes with either 19-inch or 20-inch wheels.
Nio realized early on that more than the Nio brand alone would be needed for market expansion, prompting partnerships with GAC and Changan, which ultimately failed due to financial issues. Onvo is Nio’s latest attempt to penetrate the mass market. CEO William Li has high hopes for Onvo’s first car, the L60, which features battery swapping compatible with Nio’s fourth-generation swap stations and modified third-generation stations.
As of July 31, Nio had 820 highway power swap stations in China, delivering over 49.6 million battery swaps, 44.11 million charging services, and 259,690 flexible battery upgrades.
Battery swapping is crucial for Nio, offering quick refueling and avoiding battery degradation. Each station costs 3 million yuan (USD 419,000), adding to Nio’s 76.4 billion yuan (USD 10.67 billion) debt. Nio needs 60 swaps daily to break even. Despite this, 54.14% of Nio drivers prefer swap stations.
Editor’s Comment:
After careful investigation, our CNC team found that Onvo’s recent announcement about the 1,000 swapping stations contradicts our previous brand information. We now believe these stations should be operated under Nio instead of Onvo. Onvo cars will have “access” to these swapping stations.
Updated: 05/08/2024
Other articles have listed Onvo’s battery pack with a 60Kwh pack. no mention of the 75 or 100. Even though the articles do say they would share Nio’s gen4 and gen3 (when upgraded) stations your article makes no mention of that. Willian Li said recently Nio may not reach the 1000 swap stations target this year so how is Onvo doing it?? Very contradicting information from other recent news.
Also there are no Onvo owners yet, only preorders that no one knows the number of.
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for your comment. Our team worked very hard to “decode” the message from Onvo’s official announcement. This article has been updated accordingly. Kindly note that Onvo didn’t officially announce the details of the battery pack, but China’s regulatory body revealed it is 60.6 kWh. Autohome that we quoted was wrong, as 75 and 100 kWh are standard batteries for Nio models. Thx.