Will the exchange still get off the ground? Apart from Nio, this brand also believes in battery replacement

Both car companies announced this during the Beijing Auto Show. Lotus and Nio will cooperate in the field of payment and exchange. Because if Lotus uses the same battery technology, exchange technology and exchange software, Lotus drivers will also be able to use Nio exchange terminals in the future. That doesn’t seem like big news, since Lotus is just a small fish in the big sea of ​​EVs, but it could still have a negative impact on the future of electric cars.

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The snowball effect

After Geely, Lotus is the second brand interested in Nio’s interchangeable technology. This can have a kind of snowball effect. Because of the partnership, there is a good chance that more brands will equip their EVs with a removable battery, making it mainstream. As a result, more and more EV drivers are discovering the convenience.

In addition, Geely and Lotus’ investment helps make battery replacement better, faster and easier for consumers. Currently, with the new generation of battery changing stations, a battery change can be done in just 3 minutes. However, Nio continues to work to speed this up. This development is taking place mainly in China, but it is not easy to transfer the innovation to Europe.

More and more battery exchange centers in Europe

Battery swapping is currently still the mainstay in Europe, although the number of battery swapping centers is growing rapidly. When we wrote about 30 million battery change of Nio worldwide, the Chinese brand had 27 so-called Power Exchange Centers in Europe. Meanwhile, 16 have been added. There are currently 43 exchange centers on our continent, spread across Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. Where you can go can be seen on Map of Nio Power.

It is located in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands you can already change the battery in your Nio at nine locations. At the end of last year, Amsterdam and Maastricht were added to the list of destinations. The first was opened in Tilburg over a year ago, and since then Energy Exchange Centers in Apeldoorn, Arnhem, Utrecht, Harmelen, The Hague and Dordrecht have been added.

Last year Nio sold 251 cars in the Netherlands. In the first three months of this year, the counter stalled at 81 sales. Now the price is also expensive. They are the cheapest you can buy in the Netherlands They are ET5, which has a starting price of more than 50 grand. And then there’s the price of the battery. With that money you can also buy BMW and Mercedes. That’s why it’s good news that Nio is busy with an affordable EV.