Nio’s network of 4,168 battery swap stations handled 1,192,221 swaps during China’s seven-day National Day holiday, and it broke its daily record twice in the process. The figures, which Nio reported itself and which haven’t been independently verified, offer a rare look at how a large swap network copes with peak travel demand.
How busy did Nio’s swap stations get?
Nio released a holiday charging and battery swap report on Friday. It covers 1 to 7 October, and the headline number is just under 1.2 million swaps. Meanwhile, the daily average rose 22 percent compared with the same holiday last year.
The busiest days told an even clearer story. On 1 October, China’s National Day, daily swaps hit a record 183,469. Then, on 5 October, the return travel peak pushed that figure to 183,664. At that rate, Nio says a car finished a swap and drove off every 0.47 seconds on average.
For context, the previous record stood at 177,627 swaps. Drivers set it on 22 February during the Spring Festival travel rush. By comparison, the Labour Day peak on 1 May reached 170,585 swaps.
How does this compare with earlier holidays?
The network has grown since the spring. During this year’s Labour Day holiday, Nio operated 3,839 swap stations. Those stations completed 1,031,469 swaps over seven days. So the October holiday added roughly 160,000 swaps, alongside a few hundred extra stations.
Charging adds a further layer. Including charging, Nio’s 9,567 charging and swap stations across China delivered 2,071,582 services over the holiday. The daily average for those combined services rose 20.5 percent year on year. Notably, the totals cover all three of the company’s brands: Nio, Onvo and Firefly.
Why were highways so important?
Long holiday road trips put heavy pressure on motorway infrastructure. From 1 to 7 October, Nio’s highway charging and swap sites supplied more than 24.83 million kWh of electricity. That’s up 30.8 percent on last year. In addition, Nio claims it represents 13.7 percent of all electricity delivered at highway sites nationwide.
Nio currently runs 1,073 highway swap stations, which connect more than 550 cities. Of those, 250 set their own daily swap records during the holiday. The busiest sat at the Rizhao service area on the G15 Shenyang-Haikou Expressway in Shandong province. It peaked at 211 swaps in a single day.
Nio also estimates its highway swap stations saved users more than 309,124 hours of waiting. That’s 14.7 percent more than a year earlier. However, readers should treat this as the company’s own estimate.
How far did drivers actually travel?
The distances were substantial. Nio says 203,581 users relied entirely on swapping to top up during their holiday trips. Furthermore, 197,684 users covered more than 1,000 kilometres over the week, a rise of 65.1 percent.
Another 127,542 drivers went beyond 500 kilometres in a single day, up 74.6 percent year on year. Altogether, owners across the three brands drove more than 714 million kilometres during the holiday.
Smaller towns played a growing part, too. Nio’s swap stations now reach more than 1,300 districts and counties across China. As a result, swap orders in county towns jumped 144.2 percent compared with the preceding period.
Can other carmakers’ drivers use the network?
They can use the charging side. Nio’s charging network is open to vehicles from across the industry. The company runs 5,399 charging stations with 31,091 charging points. Interestingly, cars from outside the Nio group took 86.69 percent of the electricity those chargers delivered.
Nio also passed a milestone mid-holiday. On 3 October, its cumulative charging sessions topped 100 million.
What’s next for Nio’s infrastructure?
Expansion continues. On 26 September, Nio completed its Silk Road battery swap route. The corridor stretches 3,605 kilometres from Xi’an in Shaanxi province to Horgos in Xinjiang, with 33 swap stations along the way.
With that link in place, Nio says drivers can now leave any swap station in China and reach every provincial-level region on the mainland using swaps alone. Beyond that, the company wants 100 scenic routes with charging and swap coverage by the end of 2026.
Automation is also creeping into the process. Nio’s September assisted driving report, published the same day, showed drivers used its navigate-on-swap feature 105,403 times that month. The function lets a car drive itself into a station and complete the swap. Overall, it accounted for 24.7 percent of swap orders at stations that support it.
What does this mean for battery swapping?
Swapping has long divided opinion, largely because each station costs more to build than a typical charger. Still, these numbers suggest Nio’s network can absorb sharp holiday spikes without obvious strain. Of course, they come from the company itself. Even so, a record broken twice in five days shows how much demand Nio’s drivers now place on it.
