Li Bin, founder, chairman, and CEO of Nio said in an article today that he thinks the plan announced at NIO Day of “400 new stations in 2023” is not enough, so he decided to build 1,000 new stations in 2023, which is the total number of stations in the previous 5 years. In the past 5 years, 1,315 exchange stations have been built nationwide).
If Ni is able to achieve this project as expected, it will be able to reach its ambitious goal of 2,300 exchange stations by the end of the year.
As a result of the increase from 400 to 1,000, Nio’s plan to add about 600 new stations in urban areas, with more emphasis on third and fourth-tier cities and counties, and about 400 new stations at highway service areas or highway entrances and exits to make long-distance travel a breeze.
Nio expects to start mass production of the third generation of exchange stations in April and to maintain a schedule of 120-150 exchange stations per month starting in June.
"Li Hong, Wei Jian, Shen Fei and I started our long-delayed customer visits, meeting with old and new friends from different regions and listening to suggestions for improving Nio's products and services. From January 14 to 15, I drove to Harbin, Changchun, Shenyang and Dalian to visit the customers in the northeast of China, where it was more than 20 degrees below zero, and I had a great experience of high-speed battery exchange. On the other hand, I also realized during my communication with the customers that the Northeast region needs to increase the number of switching stations several times before the customers can really travel without worries. During the Spring Festival, the unlimited number of free highway exchanges was recognized by everyone, setting a record of 63,000 exchanges in a single day. While it was convenient for everyone to travel during the festival, it also exposed the need to improve the power exchange service capacity on popular highway routes during the festival. I went to Wenzhou and Taizhou on the first day of work after the Spring Festival. The plan to add 400 new stations by 2023 announced at NIO Day is far from enough! We need to further accelerate the deployment of exchange stations so that more customers can experience a more convenient exchange service than refueling as soon as possible. We have set a new goal of adding 1,000 new stations in 2023, and over 2,300 stations by the end of 2023."
