70% of NIO Consumers Now Renting the Battery

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NIO has been operating this battery swapping experiment for a number of years, and it’s been an fascinating ongoing exploration of how a lot individuals desire pack swapping to quick charging, how connected individuals are (or usually are not) to their EV’s batteries, and what makes probably the most monetary sense. Nevertheless it’s now going into much more instructions, and prospects prefer it.

NIO had already been providing a “battery as a service” (BaaS) possibility whereby individuals may purchase a NIO automobile however simply hire/lease the battery within the automobile. That would drop the upfront value of a NIO by as much as about $10,000. Nonetheless, beginning March 14, the corporate began providing a modification to that — if the NIO proprietor determined sooner or later that they wished to personal their battery pack, they may purchase it out from NIO and the quantity they’d paid in renting the battery (or batteries, to be correct for many of their circumstances) would go towards their buy.

Since offering this feature, NIO says that greater than 70% of its automobile patrons have chosen the battery leasing possibility! Nio cofounder and president Qin Lihong offered this fascinating nugget of information at this time the Chengdu Motor Present.

Naturally, a few of these NIO patrons — possibly even most of them — won’t ever determine to purchase out the battery of their automobile. Nonetheless, simply given customers the selection was sufficient to get extra of them to lease their automobiles’ batteries. The issue, which I’m positive lots of you’re already asking about, is that we don’t know what number of had been leasing the batteries earlier than! Nonetheless, the purpose of the assertion was that much more individuals are, and +70% is a reasonably gorgeous share displaying what customers now desire.

One other facet of this: Nobody else is providing this, so far as I’m conscious. If excess of half of NIO’s patrons desire this feature, one would assume that many different EV patrons would love the identical possibility! I positive wouldn’t thoughts it. So long as NIO has set itself aside on this approach, one would assume that may assist to tug in gross sales. After all, NIO can also be within the distinctive place of main for a number of years on battery swapping, a service that can also be distinctive within the business.

At this level, I feel I’ve solidly moved on from the query of whether or not EV battery swapping may have a spot sooner or later or not, and I’m satisfied it is going to. I feel it is going to turn into extra frequent to supply this service and provide versatile battery leasing. Possibly not within the US, the place somebody must open the market, residential density is far decrease, and we’re extra obsessive about private possession. However in different markets, I see this rising. Even within the US, if NIO determined in the future to enter the market, I’d wager on it succeeding with this right here too.

The counter argument is that batteries are getting cheaper and cheaper, and the utility of battery leasing and swapping is lessened as that’s the case. Nonetheless, I feel it’s helpful sufficient, and NIO’s stats appear to show that. What do you assume?