70% of NIO Consumers Now Renting the Battery

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NIO has been working this battery swapping experiment for a number of years, and it’s been an fascinating ongoing exploration of how a lot individuals want pack swapping to quick charging, how hooked up individuals are (or aren’t) to their EV’s batteries, and what makes probably the most monetary sense. But it surely’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 lease/lease the battery within the automobile. That might drop the upfront value of a NIO by as much as about $10,000. Nevertheless, beginning March 14, the corporate began providing a modification to that — if the NIO proprietor determined in some unspecified time in the future that they needed to personal their battery pack, they might 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 selection, NIO says that greater than 70% of its car patrons have chosen the battery leasing possibility! Nio cofounder and president Qin Lihong supplied this fascinating nugget of information immediately the Chengdu Motor Present.

Naturally, a few of these NIO patrons — perhaps even most of them — won’t ever determine to purchase out the battery of their automobile. Nevertheless, simply given shoppers the selection was sufficient to get extra of them to lease their vehicles’ batteries. The issue, which I’m certain lots of you might be already asking about, is that we don’t know what number of have been leasing the batteries earlier than! Nevertheless, the purpose of the assertion was that much more individuals are, and +70% is a fairly gorgeous share exhibiting what shoppers now want.

One other facet of this: Nobody else is providing this, so far as I’m conscious. If way over half of NIO’s patrons want this selection, one would suppose that many different EV patrons would love the identical possibility! I certain wouldn’t thoughts it. So long as NIO has set itself aside on this manner, one would suppose that will assist to tug in gross sales. After all, NIO can be within the distinctive place of main for a number of years on battery swapping, a service that can be distinctive within the trade.

At this level, I feel I’ve solidly moved on from the query of whether or not EV battery swapping can have a spot sooner or later or not, and I’m satisfied it would. I feel it would grow to be extra widespread to supply this service and provide versatile battery leasing. Perhaps not within the US, the place somebody must open the market, residential density is way decrease, and we’re extra obsessive about private possession. However in different markets, I see this rising. Even within the US, if NIO determined sooner or later 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 suppose?